Nightswimmer (27 page)

So I finally dare a full look at you. Your hair is longer, gelled a bit to relax the curl; your skin is tanned, and your eyes are still piercing blue. I hate you for looking good. And what’s worse is I can see a certain soulful glimmering in those eyes.

The dock is encroaching on our one-way conversation, so you breach the silence again. “I had to come back to New York. Because I couldn’t let you be left twice.”

I’m now compelled to speak. “I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t want to be like
him
,” you explain.

This sort of perception is what in the beginning so quickly broke down my defenses. But by now it has taken a toll. I still can’t believe you could leave without telling me, after all we talked about, when you knew it was the worst possible thing to do to me. I wait another moment and then say, “But you
are
like him. You vanish when you can’t handle somebody’s devotion.”

There was more to it than that. I’d heard the phone message at your apartment, hadn’t I? Your neighbors said they saw me going into the building. When they forwarded all your mail, the letter you’d left me was missing. Had I read the letter?

I admit to you, I read it. “But you still could’ve stayed, Sean. It might’ve been hard, but you could’ve faced it.”

“You’re absolutely right, okay? And it’s embarrassing to have to admit that. Because at least you had the guts to leave yourself open to me. At least you were willing to risk falling.”

“What a fucking line,” I say as the boat makes its final approach, as I can feel the other passengers charging up to return to the eternal pleasure-seeking that goes hand in hand with living in New York City.

You move in closer until our shoulders are jammed together, and as I edge away you say, “I just want you to tell me honestly what you were doing leaning out over the water like that. Were you about to take another one of your unexpected swims?” The ferry sounds its horn and the passengers begin gathering their belongings.

I remember Chad. I remember the voyage out to the Channel Islands, where, just off Santa Rosa, the boat intersected a school of blue porpoises. I remember how they rushed the side of the boat like a Marine battalion, their opaque, gentle eyes catching light, how they seemed so content in their powerful locomotive freedom. Sunlight coming from the east glinting on the surface of the water like silver lures, and Chad, shirtless, was leaning over the railing as I am now.

He was watching the porpoises undulating, watching the power of their waving tails, and the blue ridges of Santa Rosa were soaring out of the mist behind his haloed head. “Christ, what a life,” he’d said. “I wouldn’t mind a life like that.”

“Your life is okay,” I told him. “You can live on land. You can go swimming whenever you want.”

He turned to me, his black eyes squinting. “I love you,” he said. “And I’d love to do it with you right now.”

“You always love it when you can’t have it.”

“I guess I love what’s impossible,” he agreed, saluting the porpoises, who were finally abandoning their escort. It is one of my fondest memories of him.

You repeat your question. What had I been doing leaning over the railing? Had I been about to jump off the boat? You must still be afraid that what happened to your father and Bobby Garzino might soon happen to me.

But I’m also afraid because I don’t want you to leave again. I’m afraid because I don’t know what I mean by this confession and that I’ve told you everything in the blink of an eye.

I realize it isn’t a bid to bring
you
or
him
back, but rather an exorcism.

Still, you want an answer.

The boat kisses up to the dock and Greg is now walking toward us, Casey straining against his leash to reach me. Waving to them, I grab my bag and hoist it over my shoulder. And then I tell you that I was praying.

I
WOULD LIKE TO
acknowledge the following people who, in various ways, made the completion of this novel possible.

Charles Sprawson, whose
Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer As Hero
was an excellent guide to swimming in literature as well as to the many writers and poets who were obsessed with the sport;

The late Allen Barnett, in whose short story collection
The Body and Its Dangers
I have found much inspiration;

Andrew Sullivan, whose article “Ecstasy and Intimacy” in
The New Republic
was a great inspiration when I was beginning this novel;

Peter Davenport, who, along with Charlet, time and again provided me a place to come away to and write;

Margaret Edwards, who gave me a careful and insightful reading of the manuscript;

Eric Steel at Simon & Schuster, New York, and Liz Calder and Maggie Traugott at Bloomsbury, Ltd., in London, who gave many helpful comments and encouragement;

Steven Gaines, who provided me with emotional support and encouragement;

Gordon Robinson, who gave me insight into growing up as a military brat in Okinawa;

John Lynch, who sang while I wrote.

Joseph Olshan is the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of nine novels, the most recent of which, the crime novel
Cloudland
, was lauded by the
New York Times
: “Joseph Olshan has stepped up and hit one for the home team. The bracing clarity of his prose . . . observes the destructive impact [the] killings have on this isolated region.”

Olshan’s first novel,
Clara’s Heart
, won the prestigious London Times/Jonathan Cape Writers’ Competition and went on to be made into a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg. He has contributed journalism and essays to the
New York Times
,
New York Times Magazine
, the
Washington Post
, the
New York Observer
, as well as the
Times
(London), the
Independent
, the
Observer
, and the
Guardian
. His books have been translated into sixteen languages.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1994 by Joseph Olshan

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

978-1-4804-2155-4

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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