Period 8 - By Chris Crutcher Page 0,7

is . . .”

“Naw, serious,” Tak says. “We aren’t made so we know exactly what to do. We gotta fuck up to find out.”

“Brain science?” Marley says. There is a definite sarcastic tinge.

Tak shrugs. “I guess. I don’t know what it’s like for chicks, but when the circumstances are just right—or wrong—like when nobody’s gonna find out . . . what can I say?”

“Maybe nothing more,” Logs says. “Let’s wrap this. Tell you what though, folks. These are questions you’ll have to consider at some point, and the sooner the better. A good marriage counselor runs about a hundred-fifty an hour.”

“You talkin’ from experience?” Justin says.

“First time I went it was only fifty,” Logs says.

“How’d it work?”

“I live with a cat.”

.3

“I’m telling you, man, this might be too soon for you. It took me an hour to get feeling back into my hands.” Paulie unloads his wetsuit from the back of the Beetle while Logs drags his from the bed of his Datsun pickup.

“Couldn’t have you diving in and taking the easy way out,” Logs says, “not after today’s P-8.”

“The easy way out?” Paulie gets it. “Oh, the easy way. Nah, I’d rather kill myself than commit suicide. This is a temporary situation that won’t last more than fifteen, maybe twenty years.”

“You’re the Lou Gehrig of the water, my man,” Logs says. “Seriously, though, you doing okay? Losing someone is no damn fun. And we’re talking Hannah Murphy.”

Paulie shakes talcum powder onto the inside of the wetsuit and over his body and chucks the container to Logs, who does the same. “I know, man,” he says. “I just gotta trust that the universe didn’t give me the best girl first. Hannah’s cool, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But if it had been the other way around, if she’d cheated on me and then asked me, like, three or four times for a chance to explain, I’d have let her goddamn explain.”

“You’re pissed.” Logs starts pulling on his suit. “Man, this is going to be cold.”

“Yes, and yes,” Paulie says. “And in just a second when we hit the water, none of this will matter.” He adjusts his goggles.

They do hit the water and the air rushes out of Logs’s lungs like he’s a fireplace bellow. “You’re right,” he gasps, catching his wind. “I don’t give a damn about your miserable life.”

“Worst part’s over,” Paulie says after the water in their suits has approached body temperature. “Let’s do it.”

They swim out about the same distance Paulie swam earlier and turn parallel to the shore, treading as they set timers on their watches. “I’ll take the first fifteen,” Paulie says, “then you. We’ll switch off and get the feel of it.”

Both Paulie and Logs have put in monster indoor workouts during the winter and hit the weight room on off days. They have very different stroke patterns; Paulie’s long and even, while Logs takes seven strokes to Paulie’s five to make up for arm length and hand span. But they’ve been swimming together long enough that they fall into each other’s pace automatically.

They swim eight fifteen-minute segments, four up and four back, switching sides every quarter hour so one keeps an eye on the shore while the other sets the pace. For the first three segments Paulie holds back, strength and size and youth all trump cards. But grit and tenacity and decades of experience even things out, and it’s all either can do to stay with the other at the finish.

“Not bad for a first shot,” Logs gasps, peeling off his wetsuit. He tiptoes barefoot to the passenger-side door, hauls out sweats and flip-flops.

“Man-oh-man, how do you do it? Are you really pushing sixty-five?” Paulie says. “No way should I be digging into my reserves to hang with you. Maybe I have fibromyalgia.”

“Cute. Let’s talk about a cure for that in the whirlpool,” Logs says. “When my hands and feet start to thaw out I’ll feel every one of those sixty-four years. Meet you up at the U.”

In the pool area at the university student rec center, Paulie and Logs lower themselves into the otherwise unoccupied whirlpool, immersing to the neck with a mutual aaahhhhh as the swirling, heated water envelops them. “Best part of swimming like that is stopping,” Logs says. “I could give up the workouts, I just couldn’t give up this.”

“That’s like saying I could give up setting myself on fire, if it didn’t feel so good when they put me out.”

“Addiction is an interesting phenomenon,” Logs says. “What