~750 words | 3-5 mins read
I sink into the pool up to my neck, the water soothing the mild sunburn on my shoulders. The low sunlight breaks into jagged patterns on the surface of the water. I put my sunglasses over my eyes.
I’m half watching the toddler, half glancing around. The pool sits in the middle of a cluster of low-rise condominiums in a gated complex. The pool and clubhouse have a vaguely Greek theme with tiles and columns and big stone vases. It’s clean but it’s chipped around the edges. A tile missing here or there, a crack in the vase, some yellow warning tape on one of the steps. Soon it will look like the real Athens.
It has fountains and bubble machines and a waterfall – but one or two are perpetually waiting for maintenance. The whole complex loyally serves the residents while it waits to be knocked down. Doing the best it can before being replaced by high-rise apartments with a soulless, postmodern pool and gym.
My son is powering across the pool with little bow-legged pistons — fueled by the holiday. The novelty and warmth and humidity and light and family attention. Suspended on the surface by three layers of foam floaties on his biceps. He wears them so the order of the colours matches on each arm.
Some other people are in the pool. A couple of very serious Singaporeans doing very serious lengths in their serious goggles and sporty, skin-tight swimming trunks. Some children dossing around. A couple of children receiving lessons from an instructor. A few mums and helpers are sitting around the pool.
I wade through the water towards the toddler, staying submerged, humming the Jaws theme. He squeals, sonic boom clattering into the open apartment windows, one-hundred family dinners ruined.
I lift him and dump him. He screams, I growl at him, chase him and splash. I have started lifting weights at 41 years old to keep up with him. I feel stronger than ever. I am starting to look like someone who exercises. I lift him and dump him again, thinking I must look pretty good — the hot dad. But none of the Tai Tais are looking at me. They’re watching the buff swimming instructor, his torso barely contained in his wetsuit top. Shaded goggles and jet black hair. Legs like oak trees wrapped in ropes falling out of his swimming shorts like banished angels.
Mogged.
Fuck him, he’s 5ft 9in. He’ll always be short but I’m in my kettlebell era — virility arc.
Except my toe nail is rotting from a fungal infection since my son stamped on my foot — repeatedly.
Except I have to watch films in 30 minute stints or I’ll fall asleep.
Except I’m waking up to piss in the night – every night.
Except I can’t blast if I’m wearing a rubber anymore.
Except I’m crashing out and eating a family bag of Maltesers on the drive home from work to take the edge off a stressful day – which is most days.
Except my wisdom tooth is aching and giving me migraines.
Except all that I’m getting swole on my wellness grind. Growing and dying at the same time.
My son is only growing – only living. He is lightly tanned. His teeth are bright white. His body is made of nothing but sinews wrapped around bone. He’s already dense like a plate of iron. Four grams of body fat.
He doesn’t know what to do with all his vitality. He will just watch YouTube all day if you let him. I have to teach him to be alive — teach him to live while I am falling apart.
I can see an old man with a zimmer frame limping through the apartment gardens. He is with his foreign maid who is coaxing him along, encouraging him as he fights for every step. He gets to wherever he was supposed to get to, which appears to be an arbitrary spot in the garden. She congratulates him. She is attractive, maybe in her early thirties, but bright and youthful. Pretty face. Good figure. She is dressed in a loose t-shirt, shorts and flips-flops. Her hair in a rough pony-tail. He is dressed in a fitted polo shirt, pale slacks and smart leather sandals. He still has a good head of hair, cut short and combed smartly into a classic gentleman’s style. He still has pride.
He says something he thinks is funny and she forces a smile. Then she looks at her phone for ten minutes while he struggles to get his breath back from the humid air.
END
Corporate Clarke's Fiction 