nightswimming

We slunk gently up the path, tiptoeing quietly over gravel and sand and rocks, our bare feet slapping on the quiet pavement. We half walked, half ran giggling into soft towels and clutching each other tight. Well past midnight it was, and hot, hot humid American summer hot. Not like down home where a cool breeze blows in off the water at night. No sir, summer in the city is stinky, and sweaty and sticky, like ice cream that melts onto your hands before you can lick it off.

After we shed the cover of the tall building we were quieter, more subdued. Gettie was making faces at me in the moonlight and I had to bite down hard on my tongue so I wouldn�t laugh. I shook with the laughter, so hard that I thought I would explode, or wet myself, either way there was no controlling it. She wrapped her towel around herself and flew away from me into the courtyard, arms flapping like some crazy red and white striped bird. I followed silently clutching my own towel and giggling softly. She sped toward the pool and reached the gate long before I did, where she plopped down on the cement to wait.

When I finally reached her she was reclining on the patio stones, using her towel as a pillow, eyes closed, waiting. I tiptoed up the walkway, the patio stones warm under my bare feet, still warm from the sun. I slowed to a crawl, barely a whisper of movement, I wanted to scare her, never thinking that she might scream and wake up the whole goddamn city. She knew I was there though, Gettie always knew things like that. �C�mon Kate, no dilly-dallying!� She rasped and then burst into giggles which she suppressed with her towel. It was a stretch, but she still sounded mostly like my mom, giggles aside. I hurried up the walk and into her waiting arms. She hugged me close for a minute, but it was hot, too hot for hugging. She smelled as she always did, faintly of peaches but on this particular night, all hot and sweaty as she was, she smelled a little more tart, like milk gone sour.

The fence was a insignificant detail, compared to the perils of escaping our hotel room with mom and dad in dozing lazily on their beds. Strictly amateur stuff it was, chain link with holes big enough to make comfortable foot holds. I was up and over in no time, with Gettie not far behind me. The air on the other side of that fence seemed cooler somehow. The pool water sparkled in the moonlight, perfectly still. I stood in awe for a minute, the darkness of the water, that fresh and almost stinging smell of chlorine.

�Don�t just stand there Kate!� Gettie whispered, giving me a swat on the rear and pushing me toward the turquoise depths of the pool. It was scary, not because of the dark but because of the stillness of it all. �Last one in�s a rotten egg!� Her words flew past my ear like some misguided moth as she took a running start and dove into the water. Her movements broke the stillness and sent ripples racing into the shadows where the water made little lapping noises against the pool walls.

�Perfect 10!� I hissed, holding up both hands, fingers outstretched so she could see in the dark. Gettie was always the best at diving. Her perfect swan dives were always something I envied, and yet try as she might she could never teach me. For lack of a better entry, I cannonballed into the deep end, splashing her and making a terrible racket. As I fought my way up from the depth I thought she might scold me for my carelessness, but she only laughed, so hard in fact that she had to hang onto the poo's edge to prevent herself from going under. �In all my life I�ve never seen such a scrawny kid make such a big splash!� She told me.

We played like that for a while, splashing and laughing and then something caught her eye. �Hey lookit Kate! It�s the big dipper.� I tossed my head back to see where she was pointing and sure enough, there it was in the late August sky, shining like anything. We floated on our backs in the center of the pool, Gettie pointing out constellations and planets and me only half listening. When she used to talk like that I mostly just listened to the sound of her voice, kind of warm and thick and comforting, rather than the words she was actually speaking.

After a while, after a time, after the moon had risen even higher into the clear, cloudless midnight sky, we climbed out of the pool and lay our soaking bodies on our stripy towels to dry. We lay our beach towels down on the still-warm stones of the patio and stared up at the sky some more.

I remember Gettie talking to me about the school she was going away to in the fall, somewhere out west, but it never really dawned on me until later that she was leaving. I fell asleep there on those sun-warm patio stones with the stars in my eyes and Gettie�s voice in my head.

And she did go away to school that fall and I missed her terribly. Things weren�t nearly as much fun at home without her and the walk to school was never the same. But I grew up, as all kids do and I went away to college too and fell in love and had kids, but I never quite forgot the quiet beauty of that night, swimming with my sister under a starry sky.