Nowhere People

Donato walks through the turnstile of the Nautical Union Guild, ignores the surprised expression on the face of the employee working on the door, walks towards the Olympic-sized swimming pool. He changes in the changing room. He does his warm-ups and stretches under the awning over the staircase you take to get to the swimming pool from the changing rooms. There are other members swimming in lanes one, four and six. He greets the employee who looks after the pools, acting as lifeguard to the members. It’s his first time here. He puts on the silver silicone swimming cap, goggles, dives into the end of lane three, he forces himself into a front crawl for the first two hundred metres and then onto his back kicking his legs, he forces himself to swim until he stops in the middle of the pool, attaches himself to one of the buoys, coughing, he’s swallowed some water. The employee who looks after the swimming pools gets up (it must be four metres deep where he is — not a place to let someone play at being ill), takes off his flip-flops, his t-shirt with the Nautical Union Guild logo on it and dives into the pool, straight into lane two. Donato is still clinging to the buoy. ‘Everything ok, kid?’ asks the club employee. ‘I’m fine … I just felt dizzy’ (he is no longer coughing, just breathing anxiously). ‘Have you been drinking, by any chance?’ he asks. ‘No. I got a bit dizzy … It was strange … I lost concentration, I felt a kind of vertigo … I started sinking as if … ’ he coughs and stops, ‘as if suddenly I didn’t know how to swim any more.’ It had been a long time since he’d gone swimming and since he had taken any risks (Donato took a risk). ‘Come on, get those goggles and that cap off so the blood can flow more easily in your head. I’ll come with you to the side,’ says the club employee. And, hanging on to the floats separating the lanes, they make their way to the side of the pool. ‘Better?’ he asks. ‘I’m a bit drowsy.’ He was stupid. ‘Can we get you over to First Aid?’ he suggests. ‘No, I just want to get out, get my clothes on and go back home.’ They go down to the changing room. The employee who looks after the swimming pool asks the employee on the door to call a taxi. They don’t have to wait long. The boy gets himself ready. The two of them walk to the entrance of the club, the employee who looks after the swimming pool asks if he has money and if he really is ok. Donato gets into the taxi, the club employee gives him a goodbye wave. Donato feels a sense of calm, a peacefulness he has never experienced before. There’s no doubt about it, he’s high on medication. The car pulls away, and he thinks that being high makes it easier to accept and understand what it’s like to be alone.

Luisa comes into the bedroom without turning on the light, she walks over to him, lies down in what little space is free on the mattress and puts her arms around him from behind. He doesn’t wake up. She notices the strong smell of chlorine in his hair. She squeezes him tighter without getting any reaction. She partially uncovers him and kisses his sweaty back (sweaty because he’s covered himself in an eiderdown on this baking hot night). She shouldn’t have come to the bedroom, being there goes against everything she had planned, but nothing matters now, she slides the palm of her hand over his body, letting the minutes pass. She wants his temperature to stick to her hands and she wants there to be no past between them; that is when she lets go of him and moves away, but at the moment she rests her hand on the floor in order to get up he pulls her back and kisses her on the mouth. She turns her back on him, but doesn’t leave the bed, her clothes and the cover are preventing their two bodies from touching. He hugs her, she doesn’t move, tears roll down her face, smear her makeup, she feels his hard-on pressing against the top of her left thigh and she lets it be. ‘I’m going with you to the airport,’ he says. ‘Please, this madness has already gone too far.’ Luisa has never been so sad. ‘But … ’ he tries to argue with her. ‘Shhh … ’ she cuts him off. ‘Mum … ’ And she insists: ‘Shhh …’