Swimmer (7 page)

It was 2.25 a.m. Jim was still sitting at the kitchen table finishing his chocolate when the doorbell chimed, making him start. He shuffled into the hallway and peered through the spyhole. It was Mervyn, his face covered in a livid green mudpack and his bleached-blond hair in curlers. Jim said, ‘Shit,' under his breath, and reluctantly opened the door.

‘Hey, Jim! I saw your light was still burning and thought you could use some company.' Mervyn was wrapped in a shiny pink silk kimono with huge black chrysanthemums on it, and he was wearing extraordinary Japanese clogs that made him teeter around the room with all his weight tilted forward, like a huge chicken. ‘If I'm disturbing you, you can throw me out. In
these
shoes, I'll probably throw
myself
out. What do you think of them? A Japanese businessman gave them to me for singing “Hello, Dolly” in Japanese, or should I say “Herro Dorry”. I was sensational.'

‘You're always sensational, Mervyn. Come on in, make yourself at home. I couldn't sleep. Well, I did sleep, but I had one hell of a nightmare.'

‘You know
why
, don't you?' said Mervyn, collapsing into one of the kitchen chairs. ‘You're emotionally disturbed about going to Washington. Leaving LA behind, leaving your Special Class II behind, leaving TT behind. You're bound to be feeling anxious.'

Jim said, ‘I'm not stressed at all. Not about leaving West Grove, anyhow. Dr Friendly's been riding me every day for the past semester. And Special Class II … well, next year there'll be a new Special Class II, all fresh faces. I won't miss students I've never met. As for TT … Well, she's decorative for sure, but she's about as useful as an overstuffed cushion.'

‘Oh, don't be so negative,' said Mervyn. ‘You're going to miss all of us, sorely. Even those students you've never met. By the way, I love your necklace. Very New Age.'

Jim took it off and handed it to him. ‘It's supposed to possess powers of clairvoyance. Ten bucks, at the psychic fair. It predicts the exact day you're going to die.'

‘Oh, get out of here. You don't believe that, do you?'

‘I don't know. But this is the point. I was wearing it tonight, when I had this nightmare. I dreamed that I was being drowned. Somebody was holding my ankle, a girl, and she was pulling me under the ocean. I woke up, and this is what my clock said.'

Mervyn stared at the clock, uncomprehendingly. ‘It's a great little clock, isn't it? Does it have a snooze facility? I love a clock with a snooze facility. Just the word, “
snooze
”, isn't that wonderful? You can just lie there, and sort your life out before you have to climb out of bed and sort it out for real. Don't you think real life is so depressing? I could spend the rest of my life in bed.'

‘Mervyn … look what the clock says.'

Mervyn squinted at it, and then he said, ‘It's
wrong
, isn't it? This is either yesterday or tomorrow. By the way, did you ever hear me singing “Yesterday”? It brings tears to people's eyes. It brings tears to
my
eyes, too. Especially the high notes.'

‘Mervyn … I woke up out of that nightmare and the clock said thirteen, six, oh one and it hasn't moved since. This isn't the
time
here, for God's sake. This is the day that I'm going to shuffle off the mortal coil.'

‘The what?'

‘The mortal coil. That's Shakespeare talk for buying the farm. This bedside alarm clock has just told me that I have nine days to live.'

‘Oh, that's ridiculous.'

‘You think so?' said Jim, and told him all about Jennie's plea for help, and Susan Silverstone, and the watery figure that had risen out of the pool when Susan had set up her spirit-trace. For once, Meryvn looked serious. ‘Maybe you shouldn't go to Washington, Jim. Maybe you're cracking up.'

‘But this little nine-year-old kid was drowned, and his mother asked me to find out who did it. And then I had specific warning that something bad was going to happen to me. Something to do with water, too.'

‘A warning? Who from? You should tell the police.'

‘I can't. They wouldn't believe me, would they? The warning … well, it came from the cards.'

‘Oh, the
cards
. Well, you know what I think about those. They're for menopausal women and lonely widows and middle-aged gays.'

‘So what? Just because they appeal to vulnerable people, that doesn't make them any less accurate. They're real, Mervyn. They tell the truth. And there's nothing wrong in being menopausal or lonely. Or middle-aged. Or gay, for that matter.'

‘Hunh! You should try it sometime! I think I'm every one of those.'

Jim said, ‘For God's sake, Mervyn, I'm trying to tell you that I'm going to die in nine days from now. I think I'm going to be drowned.'

‘In that case, you should stay away from water. I'm not just talking about pools, or the ocean. I mean, don't even have a glass of water on your nightstand.'

‘Get out of here.'

‘I'm kidding around with you, Jim. I'm trying to make you see sense. That poor little Mike was dragged down under the water, but it was an accident, most likely. Faulty pump. Missing safety grille. The number of little children who get their hair all tangled up in swimming-pool filters, you wouldn't believe. Those filters, they scalp more people than the Oglala Sioux. I know, I used to work for Valley Pool Pumps. The stories I could tell you. We found a guy who got his pony-tail tangled in his hot tub and he sat there for seventeen days, simmering. By the time we found him, he was guy broth.'

‘Well, let's leave those horror stories for now, Mervyn. What I need to know is, did you ever hear anybody else mention a water creature, a person all made out of water?'

‘Oh, come on, Jim, I don't think so. You're just trying to spook me out. I guess the nearest we had was two of our operatives who worked on a pool in Sherman Oaks. They were refilling it, after somebody's daughter drowned in it. And when the pool was almost full, one of our operatives pushed the other one in – you know, just for a joke. But that guy came out that pool in a total panic. He said that somebody had tried to pull him under, and drown him. But who, or what? There was nobody else there. The other guy could testify to that. And there was a neighbor leaning over the fence, and the neighbor didn't see nothing, neither.'

‘That sounds distinctly similar,' said Jim. ‘That figure I saw … she was made out of nothing but water, I swear it. But she had arms that could drag you down below the surface. And she had such an expression on her face. Scowls weren't in it. She gave me the feeling that she would kill me, as soon as she could lay hands on me.'

‘Hm. You're sure it wasn't my mother? When she's mad, boy, the looks she gives you. They could turn cheese.'

Jim said, ‘I feel like I'm losing it, Mervyn. I feel like I don't know the difference between one side of reality and the other.'

Mervyn held his hand, and gripped it tight. ‘You're a good man, Jim. You're better than you know. But you should allow yourself to be selfish sometimes. You should do what
you
want to do. I clean up around here, and unblock toilets, and run errands for the old folks. But that's not charity. That's not martyrdom. I do it because I love it. And if you feel the same way about the things that
you
do … about those young people you teach how to read and write and appreciate poetry … you do it because it's your lifeblood. You do it because what's the point of getting up in the morning if you
don't
?'

Jim said, ‘Maybe you're right, Mervyn. I don't know.'

‘You're scared, aren't you?'

Jim looked up at Mervyn, with his khaki mudpack and his bright pink curlers, like the chief of a primitive tribe, and said, ‘You're damn right I'm scared. If this is real, I'd hate to see the supernatural.'

‘How about a drink?' Mervyn suggested. ‘A piña colada with a pink beach umbrella would do.'

‘How about a cup of coffee?'

‘For sure … if you insist.'

Jim went into the kitchen and switched on the light. As he approached the stainless-steel sink, he suddenly became aware of
scurrying
on the draining board, like dozens of cockroaches scuttling for shelter. But then he realized that it wasn't cockroaches. It was drops of water, hurrying off the draining board and into the sink, and flying
upward
into the faucet. He stood stock-still and watched in horrified fascination as drop after drop flew upward, totally defying gravity, and disappeared from sight.

It was just as though he had caught them out, these drops of water, and they were running away from him, and hiding.

Very cautiously he approached the sink. He put his hand on the faucet, and wondered if he ought to fill the percolator or not.

In the end, he went back into the living-room and said, ‘I'm sorry, Mervyn. I'm bushed. Why don't we call it a night? Or a day, rather. Look, it's growing light.'

‘No coffee?' asked Mervyn plaintively.

Jim shook his head. ‘Not now. It always gives me nightmares.'

H
e walked into class the following morning and his students were all chatting and laughing and throwing rolled-up gum wrappers and propping their Nike trainers up on the desks. He couldn't blame them: there were only two days to go before the end of the summer semester, the end of the year and the end of their time in Special Class II. If they hadn't learned anything about self-expression by now, they never would.

He hung up his crumpled blue linen jacket and sat down at his desk. He opened his copy of
New American Poets
and began to thumb through it very slowly, licking his thumb with every page that he turned. Gradually, Special Class II began to settle down. At the very back, Nestor Fawkes sat down first, frowning expectantly. Nestor was wearing a washed-out T-shirt and grubby jeans and trainers that were worn through right to the soles. His cheekbones were bruised, and there was a livid scratch on his forehead.

Out of everybody in Special Class II, Nestor was the one student that Jim was most reluctant to leave. Nestor still needed his help, both emotional and educational, but he was going to have to leave him behind. What else could he do? He couldn't shoulder responsibility for the whole world. For one thing, he didn't have the time.
You should allow yourself to be selfish sometimes
, that's what Mervyn had said.

Stella Kopalski kept on chattering. She had blond, piled-up hair, and eyes as green as spearmint, and today she was wearing an ultra-tight white T-shirt and an extra-short blue denim skirt, and white high-heeled ankle boots. ‘You know what I'm thinking of doing this summer?' she was saying. ‘I'm going to work in this topless bar, Jugg's, on Sunset. I'll bet you I'll land me a part in a movie by September.'

Jim didn't say anything, but continued to leaf through his poetry book. He and his students had only six more hours together, and then he was going off to Washington to work for the government's Literacy Action Force. If he hadn't managed to change their lives by now, he never would. Stella Kopalski had written one of the saddest and most eloquent poems that he had read this year, but, if she felt it was her destiny to work in a topless bar on Sunset, there was nothing he could do about it.

Whenever I open up my closet doors,

My clothes, on hangers, remind me of the days I've spent

With friends, with dearest friends; with people who have loved me good and true.

With people who are dead, or disappeared.

I bury my face in the soft forest of cotton and wool, and cry and cry for all of you.

And there was Tarquin, arch-rapper, tall, gangly and black, with his Sony headphones on his ears, listening to some macho music about bitches and blowing people away. And Washington Freeman III, still leaning back in his chair and pontificating that society owed him a living, no matter what he did. ‘I didn't ax to be born, now did I?' And Laura Killmeyer, who had grown out of her witch phase, with the deathly-white make-up and the arched eyebrows, and who was dressed in Gap now, tight black T-shirts and big flappy canvas pants, and short-cropped crimson hair. And Dottie Osias, who had stopped slavishly following Laura Killmeyer and was making her own fashion statement, which was principally baggy and orange.

Jim loved them all; and if they had ever guessed how much he loved them they would have been deeply embarrassed, even though they loved him too. Joyce Capistrano, Randy Relling Jr and Linda Starewsky, with her bouncing red curls and her arms and legs like a newborn giraffe. Waylon Price and Christophe l'Ouverture, who came from Haiti and was deeply interested in voodoo. Every year, Jim's remedial English class had presented him with new challenges – but more than that, it presented him with new faces, and fresh chances, and startling new opinions.

‘Okay …' he said at last, looking up from his book. ‘You and I have two more days together. After that, I'm going off to Washington, D.C., to develop a literacy program for the federal government. And you … well, you're all going off to do whatever it is that young people do when they finish community college. Take over General Motors; open up a peanut stand; dance; sing; go to Hollywood.'

‘You ever coming back, man?' asked Tarquin.

‘To West Grove? No, I don't think so.'

‘What about the kids coming here in September? Kids who can't read and write too good?'

‘They'll be well taken care of. Ms Schaumberg is taking over Special Class II, and believe me she knows what she's doing. You should hear Ms Schaumberg reciting the Gettysburg Address. Enough to send shivers down your back.'

‘Just
lookin
' at Ms Schaumberg, that's enough to send shivers down anyone's back! Like,
Night of the Living Dead
, or what?'