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He couldn’tstop,
That high-pitched sound she was making. The roar of the fan and heater overhead. They were sucking him into a tunnel. A tunnel that was pink, and wet, and hot, and it was …
It was ….
Oblivion.
* * *
Quinn said,when they were quiet again and she was lying in bed in her favorite position, turned away from him but letting him pull her back against his body, his arm over her chest—which was the whole frustrating Quinn question right there—“I’m going to miss you all so much.”
He said, “Try to keep me away from you. Just try,” and tightened his arm around her. That was some sharing, for Quinn. He needed to take advantage of it. He needed to find out what …
The thought drifted away.
She said, “It feels like it. It feels like—”
He reallywasfalling asleep, but he forced himself to wake up again. Barely. “Like what?”
She said, “Obviously, it’s nothing like it. I don’t even know why I’m thinking of it.” Which was heaps of protesting.
He said, “What? Tell me.”
Her body shook a bit, like she was laughing. “You’re going to wonder how much importance I’m putting on this thing. It’s like when I had to stop swimming.”
He was awake now. “I could be putting some importance on it too. You could ponder that. What about when you stopped swimming? What happened?”
“I was twenty-four,” she said. “Fourteen years ago. It’s amazing I still remember.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “some things you don’t forget.”
“Oh. Obviously, your wife. Which this isnothinglike. Why am I even comparing it?”
“It’s not a competition. And if you want me awake to hear this, you’d better get to the point.”
“Oh. Well, OK, here you go. I was twenty-four, like I said. Normally, you have until you’re twenty-six, twenty-seven, as an elite swimmer, but your peak is usually only about two or three years. I peaked at twenty, or maybe at twenty-two, but I didn’t know I had. I thought my peak was still coming. I won gold at the world championships the year I was twenty-three. I was all set for Beijing the next year. My training was on point. I was in my second year at Stanford Law, but you know, I’d always been in school, so that wasn’t it. Everything was going the way it ought to, the way it always had. I was focused. I was disciplined. I was doing it.”
Her voice was wondering. Almost incredulous, still. He asked, “What happened?”
She sighed, there underneath him. “Rotator-cuff injury in training. I recovered, I worked hard on my rehab, as hard as ever, but I couldn’t …. I didn’t …” He felt the convulsive force of her swallow. “I didn’t qualify for Beijing. I finished, and I knew. Even before I looked at my time. I knew the time in my head, and I knew I’d been passed. You always know. I hung onto the wall, and I felt …” A long moment, until he wondered whether she’d go on. “I felt empty. I’d never been that empty. I was only twenty-four, and I knew it was the end of the road.”
He kissed the back of her head, because that was all she was offering him. “Yeah,” he said. “I reckon you did.”
“You don’t understand.” At last, she turned to face him, her palms pressed together, making a pillow for her cheek. “I’d never felt like that. I had … I hadpurpose.What was my purpose now? I knew it was gone, and it was the worst … the worst feeling in the world. Getting out of the pool, walking over to my coach … it was a thousand miles. And afterwards, I …”
Another pause, and it was like her heart was there, beating in his hand like the wings of a butterfly. Strong, and so fragile. He passed a hand over her cheek, smoothed her hair back. “Tell me. If it’d been me, I’d probably have got pissed and stayed that way. Drunk,” he clarified. “At twenty-four? Yeah, that would’ve been it. Crawled into a bottle for a couple of weeks, or maybe a couple of months. Slept with too many girls and forgotten their names. I’m guessing you didn’t do that.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I was in law school.”
“You realize,” he said carefully, “that that doesn’t stop other people from cracking up.”
“Oh, I cracked up,” she said. “Quietly. I’m more like Troy, I think. I do things more … internally.”
He stared at her. “I just had that thought about Troy. Just today.”
“Yeah? I guess we’re both very wise.”
“So what happened?” he asked. “With the crackup?”
