The Drowning Child

18

Jimmy Lyle sat in the corner of the Internet café. He was logged in to the site under Rapid01. Seeing the name Lynn96 blinking, ready to chat, accelerated his heart rate every time.

The images filled his head. His entire body felt filled. His dick was hard. He was thinking only of the kids, not of Lynn96. Lynn was not to be visualized. Lynn, he figured, was a crack whore, a meth head, a junkie, someone willing to sell four hours with her two kids for $350. He wondered how she came to her price.

The rules of the café were printed on an A4 sheet stuck to the wall: RESPECT OTHER CUSTOMERS, NO PORN. Jimmy looked around. There were only two other customers, in the furthest corners. He took off his jacket, put it across his lap. He slipped his hand underneath it, unzipped his fly. The guy from behind the counter came out with an antibacterial spray and a cloth. He eyeballed Jimmy as he sprayed down the surface three tables down.

Jimmy zipped up his jeans, put his hand back on the mouse, clicked a few times, looked interested. His mind was in Lynn’s back garden. The sun was glistening on the pool. The children were standing beside it. He was kneeling by the water, smiling at them.

The guy from the Internet café had taken out a Sharpie, was writing in a notebook. Jimmy was hit with the smell of the ink. The image of his father replaced the image of the kids and he felt a surge of rage. The surface of the water in his mind was broken not by them, but by his daddy’s powerful, muscular form. The pool was no longer a pretty garden pool in the Miami sun, but the middle school pool with its stench of chlorine and its freezing tiles.

Every morning at 7 a.m. his daddy did one hundred laps. Jimmy would watch him from the bench, alongside whatever boys or girls were there because they didn’t do as they were told in the previous day’s class.

When Jimmy’s father was finished, he would rise like a god from the water, walk to where he laid his perfectly folded towel, dry himself off. Sometimes, one of the lady teachers would find a reason to come in, to ask his father a question or to talk to one of the kids, but Jimmy knew they were there to catch sight of his daddy, free now, single again, available.

Jimmy remembered the pretty little Mexican girl from his class, how she would sit on the bench in her red swimsuit, wrapped in a pretty pink towel with a giant swan printed on the back. He remembered her and how she would shiver, even when she hadn’t been in the water, even when she was dry.