Swimsuit 2

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We had to walk along a short dirt trail that sloped downwards to get to the river. The trail was covered with branches, and roots stuck up everywhere. At the river, there was a gigantic flat boulder big enough for thirty or more people to stand on. Shading the boulder were thick, horizontal tree limbs from a tree that grew on the bank. Somebody years ago had tied a rope to one of the limbs, so you could go running off the boulder, swing out over the water, and flip into the river. Even though it was a hot day—perhaps a hundred—there wasn’t anybody else out on the river where we were. At least, there was nobody swimming. When we first got there, a family was floating by on canoes. I remember Paul saying something to Zack about how burned their kids were, and I had looked and one of the kids was scarlet from the sun.

We swam for about an hour, and then Zack tore his swimsuit—that thin faded yellow thing—on a stick that was submerged in the water. He tore it all the way up to the waistline, so that what was once mildly comical was now hilarious. The swimsuit barely covered anything at all, so Zack got out of the water and went back to the truck to grab a pair of jeans.

I had to give him the keys to the truck, and then I sat there on the boulder in the hot afternoon, making peace with a life that only goes in one direction. Paul was in the water, but he climbed out, and he came and sat down next to me.

We sat there together, looking out across the muddy water. I was sitting with my knees in my hands, and he was sitting too—leaning back with his hands behind him. Across the water were tall grasses and a copse of thick trees.

Paul turned his head, and he spat in the other direction. “You know,” he said. “My girlfriend and I broke up the other day.”

“Yeah?” I said. “How long had you and Sarah been together?”

“Four years,” he said, looking at me.

I waited. It looked like Paul wanted to say more. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. “It comes and it goes,” he said.

“I guess.”

“I guess so too. I’m heartbroken. I cried when she left. Then I didn’t cry at all for a couple of weeks. I thought about her at night sometimes; I used to have no trouble getting to sleep, now I toss and turn. You know what that’s like, Dave?”

“What? Tossing and turning?”

“You think I mean, ‘tossing and turning’? You think I’m talking about in-unstoppable-somnia?”

I laughed. “Um, no.”

“No, I’m not talking about ‘tossing and turning’, twit. I’m talking about heartbreak. You know what that’s like?”

“I guess.”

“You guess? You guess? What are you, a shitty gambler?”

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