The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (reading fiction .TXT) 📗

to the shallows and back. My mother didn’t like me swimming laps. “It makes your shoulders so broad,” she would tell me. “Just flounce around, play with a noodle.” Flouncing bored me. And the Henseys didn’t allow noodles—those were public pool toys. So I performed my normal routine: ten laps as quickly as possible. Then I repeated the circuit until I beat my original time.

That day, I ended my laps in the deep end, lungs pulsing, and pulled myself onto the diving board. The air made me chatter and shiver and I rushed to the edge of the board but paused. It felt like something was clenching my waist. Back in the house, Mr. Hensey smiled flinchingly from an upstairs window. He swiped an encouraging wave across the glass. The boys who peered at me from their bedrooms normally scrammed when I noticed them staring. Mr. Hensey, however, didn’t scram. He wanted something from me he felt he deserved. I didn’t know what he wanted, or why he shouldn’t have wanted it, so I waved back, a whipping windmill of a wave, and he gave me a thumbs-up. It seemed only right to put on a show. I tried a flip for Mr. Hensey and mistimed the jump. The back of my head smacked the board.

I woke up on a lounge chair with my head swaddled in gluey red towels. Mr. Hensey was shouting at my father about lawyers—“the best in the country,” he kept saying. I called for my father. “Thank god you’re up,” he said. He scooped his arms beneath my knees and my neck and carried me to his truck, muttering figures. He was tallying the cost—not of the emergency room but of losing this job. “You shouldn’t dive like that,” he said as he buckled me in. At the truck, he hollered, “I’m sorry!” to Mr. Hensey. He promised to finish the job early that week.

There were no signs of brain damage, but I suffered a minor skull fracture. A lengthy gash on the back of my head required seventeen stitches. News of the injury spread to my father’s clients. Talk of him suing Mr. Hensey caught on. Mr. Hensey had likely started the rumors to cast my father as an opportunistic money-grubber using his daughter’s injury to steal money from someone who’d earned it. I doubt my father knew the first thing about hiring lawyers. Still, his clients grew wary. In the coming months he lost nearly all of his scheduled jobs, and that winter he moved to Florida. He’d always wanted to move there; now work wasn’t holding him back. In Boca Raton, he met his second wife, a stylist named Patricia, and started a family with her. We’ve spoken on the phone four times since he moved, haven’t seen each other once.

For decades, I blamed myself for his departure. You shouldn’t dive like that sliced through my mind whenever I thought of him. I missed his harried jokes and loopy scenarios. I missed driving with him to jobs. Even after it became clear what Mr. Hensey had wanted from me, I still wished I had known better, that I’d flipped him off and slipped fishlike under the water. Had I been more mature, my father might have remained in New Jersey, in my life.

Watching the men at The Atmosphere apologize, though, uncoiled a rope of rage inside me. I’d wasted years furious at myself when I should have been angry at Mr. Hensey. My father shouldn’t have apologized; he shouldn’t have scolded me for diving. I began to daydream about my father kneeling before me, hands clasped, begging me to forgive him for running away.

twenty-seven

A DIAMOND MOON reflected against the glass of the pond. Peter and I had just guilelessly fucked behind the barn—the first time in a week—and a faint flame of lust heated my heart. The illicit thrill of spying on the men made me pulse with desire. I was anxious to return to our daily routine. I wanted Peter constantly throughout the day—not Peter, but his body, the power I felt over him, and my wanting made me reckless. I grazed two fingers across his elbow at lunch, nudged close to him on the morning jog. He tried to ignore my advances; his standoffishness only made me desire him more. Who was he to not reciprocate? We didn’t so much as fuck that night as he conceded himself to me, more out of obligation than want. Alone, I meandered to the cabin, wishing I felt more wickedly wanted. I paused at the pond to check my phone. A voicemail from Roger awaited. I slipped out of my shoes and stepped ankle-deep into the water, drifting into the future he offered.

Sasha: It’s Roger. We’re two weeks out from the launch. I see you’ve gotten some undesirable attention recently. Don’t for a second think that reduces our interest. We’re still committed to making this work. But I need to know if you’re interested. Whatever you think we can pay you we’ll double it. Please give me a call.

twenty-eight

PETER SAT CROSS-LEGGED on the chair on the table. The sight of him inside the barn ready to confess to his greatest misdeeds twisted my stomach. I fixated on him, wishing I could drag him away. I didn’t want him to go through this, I tried to convince myself, but I knew immediately this wasn’t true. I had no real interest in saving Peter. I had no interest in authentically knowing him—which is why it hurt me to see him on the table. If I heard his story, faced his grief and regret, I would have to see him as a person, to see the parts of him I tried to avoid during sex.

He rapped his knuckles against his knee, exhaled with fluttering lips, a nervous tic that frustrated me. He never knew he was doing it. Plenty of times, I’d told him to quit and he’d