Professor Lynch tilts his head to better study me. His eyes probe the way they must probe a specimen he can’t figure out. He’s wearing a lilac bow tie with his suit today. It looks stupid, but I think that might be the point. “If you skip again I’ll have to mark you absent and your credit goes way down.”
I smile. “Good luck with that. Now move or I’ll smear my shitty gloves all over you.”
He rears back. “What’s your name?”
My gloves come off with a snap and I throw them in the rubbish, before removing the whole bag and carrying it in the direction of the bins.
“What are you doing here?” he calls.
It’s a damn good question.
The next time I see him I’m sweeping the courtyard outside the university café. He’s with several of his colleagues, drinking Americanos in a rare moment of sunshine between the clouds. His eyes fix on me across the courtyard; I don’t know how I know because I’m very careful not to look at him. I just feel it. I start sweeping closer because it’s my job, I have to, and so I reach the table next to his, where a mound of hot chips has been spilled. I stoop to sweep them up, laughing as a seagull lands and tries to pinch them from me.
“All right, then, you win, greedy guts.” I leave the chips for the bird, realizing as I do that it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen one in this courtyard, when once you could barely eat a meal out here without getting invaded by a flock of them. It’s much quieter now, without their raucous battling for scraps.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice says and I look up to find a plate being shoved in my face. It’s one of the women from Professor Lynch’s table, and her plate is covered in half-eaten food. I’ve seen her around—she’s another professor in the science department, thirties, charming, apparently racked with impatience.
“I’m not a waitress,” I say. Plus everyone knows they have to take their own tableware inside.
“What are you?”
“A cleaner.”
“So … here.” She thrusts the plate even more forcefully so I have no choice but to take it.
“I’ll take it inside for you, shall I?”
Her eyes swivel back to me, surprised. They narrow, as if she’s only just noticing me for the first time and not liking what she sees. “That’d be great.”
“Want me to accompany you to the toilet, too? I’m great at wiping arses.”
Her mouth drops open.
I carry her plate inside, and I don’t know what possesses me but I wink at Niall Lynch as I pass him. His expression, for the briefest moment, is utterly mystified and makes the whole thing worthwhile.
* * *
My front tire is punctured, which is why I’m walking my bike along the headland tonight when I see him for the third time in one day. Seated on the bench I love, he holds a pair of binoculars with which to watch the seabirds caterwaul and fish for their dinner. The diving cormorants, forcing their way bravely through the dark water.
I stop beside him. The sun is beginning to set, but this time of year it’s a little too far north to see where it hides behind the headland, and a veil of clouds besides. The light of the world is ashen, the sea at this hour rough and impassioned and searching.
After a little while I say, “Hey.”
Professor Lynch jumps half out of his skin. “Jesus. Fuck. You scared me.”
“Payback.”
My eyes graze his binoculars and without a word he passes them over. And like that the birds are no longer smudges, but elegantly detailed and purposeful and real. They steal my breath as they always do, these creatures who think nothing of having wings.
“I’m Niall.”
I don’t take my eyes from the birds. “I know.”
He stands with the kind of jerking speed that tells me immediately something is wrong. I lower the binoculars, follow his pointed finger to the shape, lift them once more and see. It’s a rowboat. I recognize the little vessel as the one that lives down on the shore, years beyond its capabilities in the water, its work now purely to advertise Nan’s Florist. There is all the strange paraphernalia about its hull, the plastic flowers and streamers and the like, and there, yes, the golden scrawl about its nose that reads Nan’s. Usually there’s an anchor keeping it on the rocks, but perhaps it’s been lost or removed because that boat is no longer safely beached but drifting swiftly out into the water, tugged along by the red-and-yellow beach umbrella that has been opened to catch the wind’s teeth. In the rowboat’s belly sit two boys.
“Wind’s got them,” Niall says.
“That rip will be next.” I can see it out there, waiting patiently and mercilessly for its prey. The dark line where waves meet.
Niall starts removing his shoes.
“Are you a strong swimmer?” I ask him. Inside I’m already moving. My body knows.
“Not really, but—”
“Get help. Find a boat and call for an ambulance.”
“Hey!”
My useless bike hits the ground. I leave my shoes on to run. Entering the water here would be foolish—along the headland a delicate finger of land reaches into the sea; from its end the swim to the boat will be easier, less directly against the current. The earth is uneven and thoughts flicker through my mind: how glad I am to have worn sneakers this morning, how I must try not to waste all my breath on the run when I will need it more for the swim. How cold the water will be. How far the boys have already been lured and how very fickle that boat looks.
Several minutes pass before I reach the white-tipped tongue. My discarded jacket tumbles behind me, caught on an eddy. My shoes scatter and my first few running steps into the sea are a familiar shot of adrenaline to the heart. I’ve swum this ocean all year round, at any time of day in any weather. I swim it morning and night as often as I can. Which has taught me not how to best it nor even, truly, how to survive it, but simply to be aware of its capriciousness even after so many years. It could take me tonight just as it could have done when I was a child or may do when I’m gray. Only a great fool, my mother once told me, does not fear the sea.
When I’m far enough out I take a deep breath and dive under. It’s cold but I’ve felt worse. Problem is how quickly my own temperature will drop. Nothing for it now, no use worrying about that. Focus instead on the lift and reach of arms, on the smooth arc of shoulders, the swift kick of socked feet and always, always the air feeding my lungs. The breaths must be perfect, the tick of a metronome, as steady and sure.
I stop often to find the boat ahead and adjust my trajectory. It seems farther from me each time. The current is dreadful. I have dread of my own, begging me to turn back. I don’t want to die. There are far too many adventures yet to be had. Over and over I think, Now, now’s the point of no return, now you will probably drown out here with the children, and what would that be for? But I keep swimming until the boat is near enough for them to hear me over the wind.
“Shut the umbrella!”
The boys struggle to do my bidding but the wind shrieks and they’re no match for it.
My fingertips at last find the tin of the hull, then the edge of the boat. My arms shake with the effort of pulling myself into the dinghy. It feels too much, and I imagine the relief of sinking back into the water’s embrace, until—small hands clutch at my wrists, trying to help me. They bolster me for the fight, and then I am hauling myself up and over with a low animal groan.