Jay

 

“Are you missing that Hilltop pool as much as I am?”

The voice booms out from behind me as I march up 34^th street for my evening walk. It’s HOT! Still 90 degrees at 7 pm and I’m moving more slowly as a result. I turn around as he comes up beside me, maintaining the social distancing by walking in the street as I stay on the sidewalk.

            I turn to grin at whomever it is. Oh, yeah, That Guy! The one with the super strange stroke situations. First, he gets in and does mighty kicking underwater for several hundred yards. Then he turns on his back and does a similar kicking, mighty and splashing. I marvel at how fast he goes without using his arms at all. Yet another part of me wonders what the hell he’s doing. Why doesn’t he just swim like a normal person?

            Who knows? He walks like a normal person, slowing his pace to keep chatting.

            “Oh, yeah, I imagine so!” I chuckle back to him, not sure how to answer a comparative question that I have no basis of comparison for. But I know what he means. We swimmers are MISSING the pool!

            “I’ve been swimming down at Keller in the bay,” I continue.

            He nods, “Yeah, you’re not the first person to tell me that. I need to try that. I got a rowing machine.”

            I eye him. He is fit. I have to give him that. Tall and lean and muscled in his khaki shorts, a non-descript t-shirt, and I assume music headphones that he has taken away from his ears. I note he has no mask, which at this point in the pandemic strikes me as strange. Didn’t the governor make some mandate recently that we all had to wear masks, even outside, even while exercising?

            But Strange Swimmer Man does maintain the social distance. So, he’s not entirely unaware of the protocols.

          

  I think about the rowing machine and how Owen Hill had one for a time, which I thought was funny. I mean, Owen likes to walk, but exercising? Not so much. Though he was a member of the Berkeley Y for a time. I remember this cuz I often went as his guest to the pool there, which I hated: cold and mean.

            Today I would kill to swim at Berkeley! And funny, Strange Swimmer Man goes on now about how he used to swim at Hilltop on the weekends and then Berkeley during the week after week. I wonder what kind of work he is still doing. Or maybe he’s not. I don’t ask. But bring up Berkeley Y instead.

            “Wasn’t Berkeley gonna reopen?”

            “Yeah,” he shakes his head, “but that was before the second wave of cases. They had a plan all worked out, but it never came to fruition……At least not yet.”

            We both walk in silence for a bit. I wonder if I will walk with him for my entire walk. Part of me wants to. It’s nice to have some company, esp. another swimmer. But another bigger part of me is nervous cuz of his lack of a mask. And while I have my pink poodle mask on, as Liv pointed out the other day, the elastic is wearing out. “Do you need another one? I could make you some more. I’ve developed these strings of fabric that adjust instead of the elastic.” She had stopped me on my morning walk this week, back from the farmer’s market at the Richmond Public Library. She tries to keep her askance glance at bay about my mask wearing out, but I feel sheepish and ashamed to have let it go for so long. After all, it’s been 5 months since she made me this one. I take her up on her offer to make me some new ones. Promise to donate to the Richmond Food Bank again instead of paying her.

            Maybe I should mention Liv’s mask business to Strange Swimmer Man?

            But I don’t.

            We are coming up to a parting point at the corner of Clinton and 34^th. I try to gauge which way he’s going, thinking how I want to continue on my own instead of swimmer chit chat with a man I don’t know. Though I kinda do. He’s one of those swimmers whose name I don’t know even though I’ve been swimming with him for years.

            So when we part ways, he continues up 34^th, I turn left on Clinton, I ask him his name.

            “Jay.”

            “Jay….” I think how very strange. My father’s name was Jay and it’s the anniversary of his death. How many Jays does one meet? I only know of 3 now. This Jay. My father. And Jay Fulbright. Yes, that Fulbright of the scholarships. Last I heard he was fat and owned a lettuce farm in Arkansas.

            “I’m Carol,” I tell him, turning and waving. “Bye, Jay!” I call out.

            “Bye, Carol,” he answers, “Stay safe and healthy!”

            “Yes, thanks, you too!”

            He puts his headphones back on and quickens his pace.

            I stroll past the Little Free Library and think of my father, wondering what he’d think of this pandemic and all of its ramifications. All I can come up with is that he’d just shrug and say, “Let’s order some pizza. Eat some See’s candies and Little Hershey Bars and watch a James Bond movie on Netflix.”

            Well, maybe that’s what I’d like to do with him.

            Jay Robert. I miss you so. But I’ve met another Jay and he’s a swimmer and there are still  surprises in the pandemic, in my imagination and in my neighborhood.