Rescue

everybody’s in. Off the sides of the pool and drown-proof.“
    Drown-proofing consists of hanging in the water, fins toward the bottom, legs relaxed, face just under the surface and head just breaking above it. Exhaling through the nose and mouth, you push downward with both hands in front of you, lifting your face from the water and breathing in deeply. You hold that breath as you relax, your body sinking but the natural buoyancy of your filled lungs bringing you back up to the original position. You then repeat the sequence, something that supposedly can be done for hours unless hypothermia or a particularly big fish intervenes.
    After ten minutes, Caryn said, “Okay. Get your masks and snorkels, then regulators in and dolphin-kick.“
    At the side of the pool, Nancy reached up for her stuff. She spit into the mask, rubbing the protein-rich saliva over the eye-side of the lens to keep the glass from fogging under water. Then Nancy slid her hand down her air hose until she found the regulator, putting it in her mouth and trying a few breaths to check, again, that the air valve was working. Around the rubber mouthpiece, she said, “Let’s go, Flipper.“
    I really didn’t like the dolphin-kick much. It requires you to keep your legs together and pretty stiff while you undulate your body from the waist to move underwater the way a dolphin can. Of course, a dolphin doesn’t have the same kind of spine we do or a metal tank banging against it. Or a tom-up shoulder and knee that were just beginning to feel right a few months after I’d injured them.
    When we all had surfaced again, Caryn said, “Okay, now I want the doff-and-don. Three times each as soon as you’re ready.“
    Nancy and I breathed through our snorkels until our respiration calmed down. I pointed to her, and she nodded. Putting the regulator back in her mouth, she dived to the bottom of the pool, doffing all her gear, tank last and over the head. Then a final breath from the regulator, which is taken from the mouth and folded over its hose on top of the tank pack. Then an ascent to the surface, breathing out the air that was breathed in under pressure and thus is expanding because of somebody’s law. Three breaths at the surface, her face bearing an oval outline from having worn the mask for a while. Her hand formed the “okay“ sign of thumb and index circled, other three fingers pointing outward. Then a free dive to the bottom, replacing the regulator and donning all the other equipment again. Clearing her mask of water by breathing hard through her nose, Nancy came back up.
    At the surface, she said, “That’s one for me.“
    I did the same doff-and-don sequence that she had, and then we alternated for two more times each, finishing ahead everybody except the older couple, who I began to suspect were ringers.
    This was our last night in the pool, the following week just a multiple-choice exam followed by a review of the right and wrong answers to the questions. Caryn had us do some simulated rescues and other exercises, and then it was time to shower, change, and go home.

    Sitting next to me in the Prelude, Nancy said, “My place or yours?“
    I drove north on Massachusetts Avenue . “Either is fine with me. I just have that service-of-process surveillance tomorrow.“
    “Then let’s make it mine. I’ll be on trial with an armed robbery starting in the morning.“
    “Dinner?“
    “I don’t have anything in the freezer. Take-out okay?“
    “Fine. Thai or Szechuan ?“
    “Your choice, John.“
    “Thai then. Wine?“
    “I’ve got white, but it’s not chilled.“
    “We’ll stop for some.“
    Her hand ventured over to mine on the stick shift. Nancy and I had been together for a year and a half. The spark was still there, stronger than ever for me and I believed for her as well, but the relationship also had grown broader and deeper in the last few months. We now had a certain easiness between us, a domestic chatter that somehow wasn’t as shallow as it might seem to others. More the comfort-zone level of exchange two people can enjoy without having to worry« about making conversation, as I’d had with my wife, Beth, I before the cancer made me a widower.
    I turned right onto Boylston, passing the Hynes Convention area and the renovated Prudential Center . They’ve done the stonework facade in Miami Vice pastels, the poor Star Market looking like it took over an abandoned nightclub. After a left onto Fairfield and another