When she used to swim at night her bones cut through water like perforating paper. It was always the same ritual, pants off first with a slight shimmy, arms up high overhead to get rid of the tank top, then it was nothing but the goosebumps on her skin that accompanied her into the blue.

Coming out? Insane.

Often, she was the only body in the gym’s pool long after the custodian’s final reminder that facility hours were over. As she swam, she would fixate on the cautionary posters peeling from the walls warning of non-supervision leading to drowning. This didn’t scare her. A girl swimming alone was rarely questioned. A girl could do much worse things.

________________________________________________________________________

“The set of spare keys are here under the orchid. Matilda has her flute lesson at 6, Miles will be with the English tutor so they shouldn’t come outside and be a bother. I’ll be out for god knows how long. Daniel doesn’t seem to care so long as there isn’t a gnat in the water.”

 “Sure, thank you.”

“Alice, ever so economical with your words.” The Baroness sighs, picking at the bowl of cherries on the counter.

“Not much of an economist. Gambling runs in the family.”

“Oh, so then it's only appropriate for us to communicate through monetary measures?” The Baroness slips a wad of cash into her hands. Their palms meeting only briefly in an exchange of not just propriety but also dominance. Sometimes, she wishes she could record this weekly physical contact and rewatch in slow motion how one hand, white and glistening, meets another, chapped and blistered. She suddenly has a desire to grip the Baroness. Shake her. Push her. Would her grip even make a dent in someone so solid or would her hands go right through?

________________________________________________________________________

            The pool was an afterthought added onto an already overthought property. While the rest of the house was burgundy stucco and cultivated hedges, the pool was a marble slab, something out of the Jetsons if the Jetsons happened to be Silicon Valley heirs. It was funny really, to imagine the Baron and Baroness of Palo Alto describing in detail to a disgruntled architect their vision for a third home yet leaving out any kind of notion of what the accompanying pool should look like. Architecture was supposed to be a meticulous art, accounting for all kinds of fractures and collapses, yet it too had failed humans.

            The air today is surprisingly crisp. Seemingly, the LA wildfires had vanished overnight. The lull of August is immediately visible everywhere. A slow forming rot disguised as last-minute dashes to eat ice cream and lie out. Lackadaisical. The word comes to fruition with a sting. Diana’s voice in tandem with that of her old swimming coaches.

“Alice, stop being so lackadaisical with your breaststroke.”

            That fall, in science class, they had learned about the process of fossil excavation. How people in white suits would chip away at rocks and needle with small incisions into solid, unforgiving forms to unearth remnants of the past. After all that effort, to be left with a skeleton. The two of them, hunched over a model of a sedimentary formation, chlorine still dripping from morning practice. Diana’s jawline in the shadows of the classroom lights, the faint hum of the projector.

    As always, she begins with the right side of the water. Dragging the net clockwise, a pantomime of dusting. It’s easy to get lost in the motion, an extension of a front crawl. The more she cleans, the less she feels.

It had started innocently enough. A slight touch on the shoulder, a combing of post-practice hair. The innate severance of body and mind at that point so ingrained in her that it didn’t make sense to question these newfound developments. During the hours of five am to nine am they were teammates, then it was up to interpretation. There was no such thing as power dynamics or roles – just her and Diana fulfilling what their bodies were meant to do. It was beautiful really the way that they could exchange and extract information from each other verbally and then melt entirely differently physically. One minute arguing about which candy sticks to the roof of the tongue worse - Milk Duds or Swedish Fish, the other putting those theories to practice. With Diana there was a surrender, a weightlessness she only otherwise felt floating in on her back between practice whistles. It never felt like sneaking around, but rather a conscious delayment. There was always tomorrow to explain. If it had been like one of those outrageous movie scenes where they had been found out or shunned or branded as despicable or dirty then perhaps the current pain would be much more bearable. But this was California where everyone had a rainbow sticker tattooed across their ass. Rather, the circumstances had been framed as “standard procedure” and “NCAA compliant,” for the team always came first. No distractions. Diana and future college sponsors yanked away because of a locker room kiss. No scholarship. No money. No future. Laughable really in this progressive day and age.

The left side of the pool required a joint.​​ Hand-rolling was calming for her, the methodical preparation and consummation of ethereal numbness. She fumbled around in her pockets until she found the lighter and sparked it under the glare of the afternoon sun. How inconsequential. She was but a skeleton in a world of other skeletons. A faint melody from the world outside clung to the breeze.

“Cruel to be kind you've gotta be cruel to be kind in the right measure, cruel to be kind, it's a very good sign cruel to be kind means that I love you, baby.” Solitude wasn’t so bad if it meant escaping cruelty. Even cruelty disguised as kindness. Like that of her coach. The dismissal from a sport she once had proudly claimed her own. It was ironic really, all of this time policing her body for nothing. Her mother and father never even questioning the series of events, almost like they had been waiting for a fuck up to occur for years. Most parents would have been enraged, arranging meetings with the school board, writing vicious vindictive emails, but her mom continued to dutifully make dinner as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Easier to practice stoicism.

The most horrible part was the waiting. Waiting for her body to catch up with her brain. For her brain to catch up with her body. There was a knowledge that lived inside her that she wasn’t a victim. She had done this to herself. The blame game went a little like this. Coach. Diana. Mom. Dad. Herself. Coach. The Diana that said and did nothing to prove that what they were wasn’t some fleeting experiment. Mom. Dad. Herself. The blame game went a little like that. No relief. Even when she scrubbed her skin after showering, the smell of chlorine would escape all sanitization efforts.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the screen door. The Baroness flung herself through the glass with such violent force that she was forced to reconsider her own gravity. How long had she been outside?

“Alice, thank god you’re still here. The fucking drain, the FUCKING drain.”

“The drain?”

“It's completely clogged. Daniel’s having a conniption fit. He just called, said the underwater camera was beeping like crazy. Said he had to leave his ESG meeting to call.”

“I didn’t notice anything.”

“He’s going to be home by seven. He’s furious, and says an ape could have fixed it.”

“Should I call someone? This may be beyond me.”

“Jesus christ, leave it to the two of us to be dealing with a drain. Fitting isn’t it. My whole life I feel drained.”

“I’d laugh if your house didn’t come straight from Vogue.”

“This might blow up in my face, but –”

The Baroness doesn’t hesitate, she jackknives.

How had she never noticed the ligaments in the Baronesses’ body? They are that of her own. That of a swimmer.

The Baroness’s arms extend into a linear plane beyond the reach of that of a casual beach goer. She watches as a body that was once foreign take the familiar shape of the girl she loved. The Baroness is a swimmer. She is a swimmer. She was a swimmer. Three months in the company of this pool and really never truly a part of it. Following the Baroness, she dives in.

At the bottom, the Baroness yanks at a miniscule piece of plastic before slamming it down so hard that bubbles escape. After the Baroness shoots up to the surface, she is forced again to follow. For everything that has happened this summer this is perhaps the craziest thing of all - to tread water across from the Baroness.

            “What the hell was that?”

            “Probably the effect of the last gin and tonic from lunch setting in,” the Baroness’s voice is an arrow.

            “You thought you could just do it yourself?”

            “Didn’t you hear me earlier? Daniel said an ape could do it. I’m a pretty lovely ape don’t you think?”

            It’s not really a question. It’s an invitation. The face of this woman is pristine. Green eyes that of a tiger’s. But she can’t shake the feeling that it's a face forced into its own type of submission. She’s been forced to submit to events both in and out of her control. Can she make something of this? Can someone finally submit to her?

            She can hear her own breath coming out in spurts. Before she knows it she’s propelling towards the Baroness. Less of a kiss, more of a demand. She’s not sure if she’s actually surprised when the Baroness doesn’t stop her.

________________________________________________________________________

On the stairs, she grips the banister trying to keep up with the Baroness. In the pool, the water had felt like a blanket, enveloping and supportive. Now, she was cold. Frigid. It didn’t matter how good things felt in the moment or how right. Sooner or later there would be nothing but stark consequences. Punishment. Erasure. The Baroness turns back briefly,

“Are you coming? I can’t have you dripping like a wet dog on the carpet.”

The Baroness’s lips were blue. Not like the cotton candy tufts she would sneak from Diana at the fair but that of an organic blueberry left behind on the counter.

            “I'm sorry I couldn't do it.”

“What?” The Baroness looked back.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t fix it.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t be strange.”

“Don’t be strange?”

“You’re assuming I expected you to be able to fix it. I never said that.”

“I was employed by you. I’m supposed to provide a service.”
            “Alice, just because I say I’m going to not eat sugar doesn’t mean I’m not going to eat sugar.”

“This wasn’t what I wanted.”

“This isn’t what I wanted either.”

“What do you want?” She’s shocked by her own directness.

The Baroness laughs, it's the first time she’s heard her laugh. Her laugh is neither here nor there. Not a girlish giggle or a throaty echo. It’s dry and practical. Solid.

The click of the thermostat alerts her that they really are indoors. She sits on the bed and waits for what feels like eternity. The Baroness disappears into the closet with the promise of dry clothes.

“Here, we’re about the same size. If I’m good, that is.”

“I’m not good. I’m actually rotten.”

The Baroness pauses.  “I wanted love. You asked what I wanted. I wanted love and I chose stability. Nothing fussy about it really.”

“Love got me cleaning pools.”

“You chose love. You chose to clean my pool. The rest is a mystery.”

“And you chose Daniel?”

The Baroness laughs again. “We both know it’s never that simple. I chose what was easier. I’m only 29 you know. Four years ago, I was doing more than just kissing women.”

“How did you know? About me I mean.”

They both laugh. What a dumb question.

The Baroness is quiet. She stares at herself in the standing mirror, dries her hair with a towel.

            “Alice. That’s part of it, you know. Choosing.”

            “I don’t think I can handle the price of my decisions.” It’s the truth, for once. The pain is searing but not as overwhelming as she thought it might be.

            “I didn’t think you were one for my kind of cynicism but remember Alice, life is a glass castle. Sometimes the first step is melting your own.

            “Do you have a lighter?”

            “No, but I have a cigarette.”

            “Am I fired?”

            “From this job? Most certainly, but I think we both know you have other matters to attend to.”

            The Baroness passes her a cigarette. Once more, two hands meet under the Palo Alto sun.