Daylight Saving (4 page)

She began to make her way toward the bank, and without a stumble, she was on her feet, walking through the shallows, shedding the water, smoothing back her hair. Her shoulders and hips were broad, and the swimsuit shone like oily sealskin.

She picked up the red top from the ground, and I knew she was the figure I had seen in the tree the night before. I was surprised to see her zip the hoodie straight over her wet self. She shuffled into a short jean skirt. Denim. It felt like I hadn’t seen denim for years.

I was about twenty meters away now, and I looked back at the Shopper, which was out of sight in the undergrowth. The girl walked up the bank a little way and sat down with her back against a tree. I was still hidden from her. She stared out onto the water, and so did I. It rocked slightly with the memory of her body. She sighed, and I thought it was a sigh of peace and satisfaction. “I suppose,” she said into the air, “it might be awkward if you came out now.”

I looked around, desperately hoping she was talking to someone — anyone — else. She carried on. “I mean, you could pretend to be doing bark rubbings or looking for your lost dog or something, but I think we both know what’s going on.”

She aimed a sly glance over her shoulder, in my direction. “Come on,” she said. “Out you come.”

I stepped out from behind the tree, my pulse slamming so hard, it rocked my vision. She turned to look at me. I couldn’t say anything.

“The thing is,” she said. “You can go online and very easily be looking at
fully naked
women within two minutes, with no trees to obscure the view.”

I shrugged. “We’re in a Comfort Plus cabin,” I said. “It’s all my dad could afford. No Wi-Fi.”

She laughed and smoothed her hair back. “That wasn’t really my point,” she said.

“I thought you might be . . . in danger, in the water,” I said.

“No, you didn’t,” she said, looking out onto the lake again. She was right. I’d never seen anyone look less in danger.

Her face was sharp and angular, the skin cold and white. There was a faint rim of green around her right eye. I couldn’t tell if it was eye shadow or a fading bruise. She wore one of those big digital G-Shock watches, with underwater capacity. She looked me up and down. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Daniel.”

She stood up. “Right, then, Daniel. Get ’em off,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“Come on. Chop-chop.” She motioned up and down with her finger.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Your clothes, Daniel. Take them off. You’ve had a good look at me, now let’s have a gander at you. Strip.”

There were lots of reasons why I didn’t want to do that. One of them was that I had a raging hard-on. “I can’t,” I said.

“Don’t make me come over there and do it for you,” she said. This did not help matters.

“Really,” I said. “I can’t.”

“Do it. Otherwise it’s not fair. You’ve seen me in my swimsuit.”

I was trembling as I pulled off my sweatshirt. She looked away. The steam was still rising off her shoulders and the drenched curls of her hair. I could see faint red marks on her left leg, a rash from the water, maybe.

I couldn’t take my T-shirt off. I kept thinking about school, about the pictures. Toddlerbody. For a horrible moment, I thought I was going to cry. She must have sensed my hesitation because she turned to look at me again. “Oh, God,” she said. “I was only messing around. You don’t have to. Sorry.”

I picked up my sweatshirt and pulled it back on. I was angry.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she said.

I shook my head.

“It’s nice, that T-shirt,” she said quietly. It was just a light-blue T-shirt, nothing special. “It looks good on you.”

I sat down. “How come you can swim so well?” I said.

“People think you have to thrash around to swim well, but it’s not true. The average dolphin is eighty percent efficient in the water.”

“The average dolphin?” I said.

“Eighty percent of its energy goes into propelling it forward. Guess how efficient the average human is.”

“I don’t know. Fifty?”

“Fifty! Way off. Three percent. Three percent efficient. Ninety-seven percent of their energy is wasted.”

“Right.”

“Swimming’s easy,” she said. “You just make a wave and ride it.”

We sat for a moment, watching a heron on the far side of the lake, his crown feather like an old man’s comb-over gone awry. We listened to the park waking up behind us. One of the staff started checking the boats over by the harbor.

“You must have good eyes,” she said.

Not as good as yours,
I thought. They were brown and green, dizzying.

“Why?” I said.

“You saw me, the other day. When you were in the electric carriage.”

“I knew it was you! I saved your life.”

“Not sure about that, Daniel. And you saw me last night. When you left the Pancake House.”

“It’s not that far away. You were wearing a bright-red top. There was a sign that said
NO SWIMMING
, but you were swimming.”

“Well. Not many people see me.”

“I’m glad I did,” I said.

“Steady on. Don’t give your heart away yet.”

I turned away because I could feel my face going red. I put the sweatshirt over my man boobs. “You know, I was only looking at you, because —”

“Because you wanted to. Because you’re a boy and you can’t help it. It’s in you,” she said.

“What’s
in
me?”

“The darkness. The will to do bad things if you can get away with it.”

“I don’t think
—
”

“All you boys. And men. You’ve got all this hate and anger and desire, and when you’re faced with the temptation of a woman, you can’t help yourselves.”

“Hate? It’s not hate. I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you like. It’s your nature.”

“Are you religious?” I asked.

“Not anymore,” she said.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Lexi,” she said. She extended her fist, and I knew she was being sarcastic. I laughed. “Come on,” she said. “Touch the glove.”

I looked down at her hand and the big watch on her wrist. Something made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t work out what it was. “It’s very nice to meet you, Daniel. You’re very interesting, and you have excellent eyesight.”

“I have to wear glasses for reading,” I said.

“You have excellent
mind
sight, then.”

I put my fist against hers, slotted my knuckles into the gaps.

She seemed to signal that the meeting was over, so I stood up and started walking toward the Shopper. I turned back, and looked again at the yellowy coloring around her eye. “When . . . ? How can I see you again?” I asked. “Where will you be?”

“I’ll be here,” she said. “But no peeping from behind the trees, OK?”

Dad wasn’t there when I got back to the cabin. Sometimes he couldn’t cope with the shame of a hangover. He wasn’t shamed enough to tidy up, though. I went through to the kitchen area (there are few real rooms at Leisure World, only “areas”) and picked up my rucksack. Dad had watered the tomato plant. But I noticed something strange about it. Four or five of the tomatoes had a green tinge to them. My life at home, with its guilty televisions and deliberate nosebleeds, was beginning to look normal compared to Leisure World. I checked that my swim trunks were still in the rucksack, and I left the cabin.

Chrissy, the older of the two sisters, was out in the garden next door, putting last night’s leftovers in the bin. “Hey,” she said. “Daniel. Wait up.”

I stopped. “Hi,” I said.

She crept close to where I was standing with the bike. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“OK,” I said.

“Your dad,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

“He came over to the barbecue last night.”

Maybe,
I thought,
he went to the barbecue, drank a cup of tea, and told a funny and charming story. Maybe not.

“He seemed a bit . . . worse for wear. Was he OK when he got home?”

“Fine.”

“Does he usually drink like that?” she asked.

“Everybody needs to cut loose once in a while.”

She smiled and her shoulders dropped. “He reminds me of my ex-husband,” she said. “Running too fast because he thinks he might be able to get away from himself.”

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

“You know, you seem stressed out, Dan. I practice Reiki. It’s basically a way to relax. A bit like massage. Maybe I could book you in for a session.”

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

I grabbed the Shopper and left.

I didn’t really know why I was going to the Tropical Dome. I had forgotten about swimming as an activity. As a kid, I had liked it. Mum had taught me to overcome my fear when I was small. We’d gone straight to the deep end at the local pool. “Are you scared?” she had said.

“Yes,” I’d said.

“What are you scared of?” she’d said.

“Sinking to the bottom.”

“OK,” she’d said. We had climbed into the water together. “Try and sink,” she had said. I looked at her like she was mad. “Go on, I’ve got you.”

Of course, I couldn’t. It was impossible to sink. Once I knew that, I was fine.

For obvious reasons, I hadn’t swum since the toddlerbody incident, but seeing the way Lexi had cruised through the lake, I remembered that it could be a pleasure.

The atmosphere in the Tropical Dome was close and muggy. Once you were in there, it was difficult to tell the real plants from the fake. Women lay on their loungers, drinking brightly colored juices, while the men read the paper or slept. Music blared out from the café shack. The wave machine came on every hour for fifteen minutes, and it was on now, so all the kids were in the water, their screams rising into the Dome’s upper atmosphere. I didn’t want to go in there with the inflatable alligators and the pissing children, so I waited near some thick vegetation, still wearing my T-shirt. I heard a voice above me.

“You OK, matey?”

It was the lifeguard, sitting on his high seat at the top of some scaffolding. He was about eighteen, with long dyed-blond hair, red shorts, and a white tank top.

“I’m fine,” I called up.

“Looking a bit edgy, man.”

“I’m just waiting for the waves to finish,” I said.

“Yeah, good call. Good call.” He climbed down from the seat. He wore a necklace strung with brown and white beads and animal teeth. “Even
I
wouldn’t go in there at the minute,” he said.

“What if someone was in trouble?” I said.

He laughed. “Nice one. Yeah, I’d go in if I
had
to. But it’s like
Pirates of the Caribbean.
Without the hot girls. I’m Ryan,” he said.

“Daniel,” I said.

He blinked slowly and held out his hand for one of those high-grip handshakes. I thought back to the fist bump with Lexi: I was lost in a world of special handshakes. “Good to meet you, man,” he said.

“Do you like working here?” I asked.

“You can’t beat the Dome. Hot all year-round. Where else in this stupid country can you wear shorts in October?”

I thought of winter PE on the rugby field, shivering and hoping I’d get hit just to numb myself from the cold, or so I could leave the field injured. Not that the teachers would let me.
Come on, Lever. Hefty lad like you. This should be your game.

“Listen, have you seen a girl swimming in here this week, with long black hair?” I asked. “Swims like a . . . she swims really well.”

“Lot of girls come through here, man.”

“She might have had a black eye. I don’t know.”

“Is she nice?”

“I guess so. Something a bit, I don’t know,
different
about her.”

“I’ll keep a lookout.”

The wave machine was coming to a halt, and kids were climbing out of the water. A spiky-haired boy stood in front of us, ready to smack another lad on the head with an inflatable hammer. He raised it behind his back, and just as he was about to swing, Ryan took it out of his hands. The boy swung anyway and looked surprised to find that his weapon had vanished. He turned around, amazed. “Peace in the pool, matey,” Ryan said to him, and gave him the hammer back.

I looked at the water, the lines of the tiles wavy and blue beneath.

“You should get in, man. You look tense. Water’s the best thing for tension,” Ryan said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Part of the service,” he said.

I waited for him to walk away, and then I quickly took my T-shirt off, threw it under a palm tree, and climbed into the water, trying to keep my body facing away from the crowds of juice drinkers and sunbathers. I felt the tiny bubbles I had made climb up the hairs on my legs and arms. Closing my eyes, I plunged under and battered out a few strokes, hearing the noise muffled above. When I came up, I was gasping for air, and I felt like all the energy had drained out of me. I wasn’t in great shape.

The world looks massive when you’re in water. It rises high, but you feel safe. You feel like a child again. The plants curved out over the pool, and I let myself be dragged along in the rapids, feeling the jet streams against my body. The ceiling of the Dome seemed miles away, in the same way it does when you go into a cathedral.