The winter was a brutal one in the city, crushing the spirits of its citizens with stretches of single-digit temperatures and heavy wet snow. I found myself hibernating inside my lightless apartment. Elvis and I began to grow fat together, thickening with our sedentary lifestyle.
One blue Tuesday morning, on a rare excursion outdoors, I resolved to go for a swim. Somehow I’d managed to stay sober for months, but I could feel my body decaying from lack of movement and constant food delivery. A hard wind was blowing down Third Avenue in mean gusts. I leaned in and let it bite my face. As I turned onto 14th Street and approached the Palladium, I could smell the chlorine wafting up from the basement pool. The scent filled me with an unexpected joy. I felt myself smiling as I pushed through the doors and flashed my ID and went down into the hot chemical air.
I found an empty lane and relished the shock as my body broke the surface. Then I swam without stopping for an hour or so. Flipping at every wall, making slow, unhurried progress up and back, lap after lap. I thought of Madeline McKay, I thought of her brother, of our coach, of our parents. All of us united by this isolated movement through the clear waters of a swimming pool.
When I returned home with wet hair frosted, brittle from the wind, I collected the mail and began to sift through the junk. I almost missed it. It was a small postcard with a photo of a bronze statue, a melancholy woman seated on a bench in some seaside town. It was postmarked from Brazil. On the back of the card, there were two words scribbled in red ink. It read: “Thank you.” It was signed “MM.”
I looked at her writing for a long time. Then I turned over the postcard and looked at that bronze woman for even longer. I wondered if her mother had heard from her, wondered if I had some responsibility to pass along her whereabouts. I decided I didn’t. She’d overcome her fear of leaving this urban prison, and at some point she’d boarded a plane for a place of endless sun and no memory.
I tore the card into tiny pieces, and then I went to the bathroom and dropped the remnants into the bowl and watched the ink and the image dissolve in the water. Then I flushed it all away.
She knew the way home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some thank yous are in order . . . There are too many to list, so we’ll leave it to the essentials, along with some collective bows. You know who you are.
First, the man who said yes, this is worthy, but only after requesting four or five rewrites before he officially agreed to be my Agent. (This might have been annoying if not for the fact that his insights were always right.) Alec Shane, of Writers House: Thank you. My debt is immense.
Next, to my first Editor, Peter Senftleben–the one who said: Yes, I want to publish this. The day before Thanksgiving, 2015, in Venice Beach, CA, when the email arrived. . . I won’t forget that moment.
To my Editor, Esi Sogah, who inherited my manuscript, and to everyone at Kensington Books: From the moment I met Esi, and from the first drinks I raised with the Kensington crew in New Orleans at Bouchercon, I’ve felt at home and grateful to be a part of a publishing team that truly treats their writers as family.
To my parents and sisters, to bruder Lars and all of Imagine, to my friends and first readers: Thank you. Writing fiction seems to be a form of socially accepted insanity. Being close to the mad folk who need to do this is not always pleasant. My love and gratitude for putting up with me . . .
And finally, to my wife Teri and my daughter Eva–you are everything. I love you.
Keep an eye out
For
More Duck Darley mysteries
Coming soon from
Casey Barrett
and
Kensington Books
Photo by Paul Eng
CASEY BARRETT is a Canadian Olympian and the co-founder and co CEO of Imagine Swimming, New York City’s largest learn to swim school. He has won three Emmy awards and one Peabody award for his work on NBC’s broadcasts of the Olympic Games in 2000, 2004, 2006, and 2008. Casey lives in Manhattan and the Catskill mountains of New York with his wife, daughter, and hound. He can be found online at caseybarrettbooks.com.
Under Water Page 28