Nightswimming

Harold and I live in a lovely, classic apartment building, with a small, rounded pool just outside our door. He goes to swim at lunch every day, and sometimes I go to the pool just to put my feet in the water. Also, our wifi reaches to the pool, so I have spent a great deal of time this summer lying next to the pool reading or writing. Covered in SPF 5,000, but still. Lying in a deck chair writing about videogames is pretty great.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here, but everyone in our building is about a hundred years old, so the pool is never loud or crowded. The other residents are all owners, and have lived here for years, even decades, and there’s some sort of owner’s board, too.  Our neighbors could not hide their delight when they discovered that the new people in The Rental Unit were a young professional couple and not students.

At night, the pool is lit from below, and it makes blue ripples across our ceiling, and it’s so tempting that sometimes we run down and go swimming at night even though I’m pretty sure the pool’s meant to be closed after dark.

Sometimes I say that Harold works all night, but the other night it was literally midnight and Harold was still putting out producer-y fires, and I couldn’t make him come outside with me. I went down alone, and sat by the steps, and dipped my feet in the blue-lit pool, and it was wonderfully warm. North Carolina and I do not always (ever) get along, but the warm summer evenings are lovely. The bottom of my skirt got splashed, so I might as well get in a little more, and then my t-shirt was wet too, so I just jumped in.  I swam until I got tired, and then I lay on my back in the warm, bright pool, looking up at the stars. And it was awesome.

So that, in case the president of the board is wondering, is why there was a 30-year-old woman swimming with her clothes on in the middle of the night.