I hate water

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Hao’s house was shaped like a displaced Rubik’s cube—unevenly stacked boxes of viridian glass. Something more traditional, perhaps an old Victorian in the West Adams district would have suited him better. Its unshapely design rebelled against Hao’s immigrant notions of fitting in.

However, Ricardo overrode his objections. To him the house proclaimed his escape from the midnight lullabies of rogue ice cream trucks, the stucco constructions of bullet holes and piss yellow, and that he had arrived to his American dream

Still the house ended up being partly Hao’s choice. Ricardo had wanted an even more absurd beach castle in Malibu, but its cliff views of the ocean Hao deemed ghastly. The waves rolled forth blue, insistent as advancing battering rams, inescapable reminders of his failing: he did not know how to swim.

For seven years, Hao never dared to wade in the shallow section of the swimming pool in his house. He did not even dip his toes despite Ricardo’s jeers to jump in and let nature take over. But Ricardo was gone; four months now and the emptiness felt more and more palatial. He awoke to the pale sun in the window, the titanium ring on the bedside table, and the cold emptiness that smoothed over half of the king-sized bed.  Hao was given to tense stares at the glass doors that opened to the pool area. How could he aspire to be the flaming libertine or the Mandarin Asshole if he could drown in four feet of water? And so Hao arranged for a swim instructor to coax him out of the forty year old notions of gravity, bipedality, and the incongruity of man and fish.

As Hao would not do with the possibility of masculine brutishness stubbing his efforts, he chose the buxom Edith Payson to teach him. Her presence rounded a matronly image of tenderness and placidity. Her crow’s feet made her look like she was permanently squinting.

One such Sunday lesson, a breeze, from the open space of Eucalyptus and sycamores, blew piney scents and brown seeds into the swimming pool area. Sunlight glanced off the cerulean awning hanging over the pool deck. Under its lively blue glow Hao, wearing swimming trunks, paced barefoot the floor mosaiced in quartz. For two weeks he had practiced blowing bubbles while being submerged underwater. Today, Edith promised a lesson in floating.

A smiling figure stepped out of a shadowed passageway behind which the dressing room was located—Edith in a black shapely swimsuit. Hao juddered at her soft smile, then clenched his fists, and asserted boldness and fortuitous favor. He followed her to the shallow end of the pool.

“Cold?” Edith asked.

“Just right.” Hao tensed through a shiver.

“Ready to float?” Her tone was kindly, and a smile curved wide as if to support her brown bob.

A Eucalyptus leaf was floating by Hao’s side. He watched it curving and uncurving over the hills and vales of water eddies. It floated just like babies or pencils floated. Fish floated too—dead ones floated. Non-floaters included Ricardo’s Our Lady of Guadalupe candles or the bronze fat Buddha on his office desk. And there was the troubling third branch of undecipherables. Did God float? If he is infinite in spirit and in space, was it a logical possibility for God to float in water? Was this an oxymoron?

As Hao tried to divide divine metaphysics, he became increasingly aware of the pool floor, its solidity, its integrity, which gave way to a sense of upward pressure on his feet. His toes curled tighter to the ground for his dear life.

He dawned to the wet warmth of Edith’s arm around his back and her voice wet and gentle in his ears. “It’s all right. Just let go of your leg… I’ve got you.”

Hao wiped his face and saw death spreading wide over the pool breathing blue and hungry. In some tiny corner of himself, he felt ridiculous. A man of his success, braving America and its corporate heights and braving the wilds of Compton for sex, should be able to let go off his damn legs and float.

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