Lifeguard

She perches high on the stand, gleaming whistle dangling, on her suit a dutiful, faded red cross. Mine her only life to guard, she does for a while watch the middle-aged woman who has nothing better to do than swim laps in the Y's indoor pool on a late Friday afternoon. I am slow, though, boring, length after predictable length of breaststroke or the duller lap of elementary backstroke perfectly executed within the taut confines of the brightly buoyed lane. So she abandons me to study split-ends, hangnail, wristwatch, until—the body of the whistle cupped loosely in her palm—her head nods toward shallow dreams. I've never felt so safe in my life, making flawless, practiced turns, pushing, invisible to reenter my own wake, reverse it.