I’m working on a new novel.
Working title is YEAR OF TWO BLUE MOONS. It takes place on an island.
Here’s the beginning:
Spearing the water, she cupped her palms, fingers webbed together as each hand entered the water, one after the other. Counting backward from nine. Right. Pulling down deep in front. Left elbow bent, rising and near dragging across the water. Right pulling her forward in line with her center. Up, out and around her hip. Left hand lancing the water like a diving bird. She breathed in . . . Nine . . .
She meant to count on the out-breath.
Eight . . . It mattered was she was emptying her mind.
Seven . . . Less than an hour to spare before her next patient-slash-client arrived, her arms and legs pulled and kicked through the lagoon, but as if seaweed were caught in her fingers, ideas of how to sort out her previous client——a sixty-eight-year old fisherman complaining of burning hands, which he held under his thighs while he sat and spoke of his pain——unbalanced her strokes, threw her off center.
Cupping. Diving. Pulling. Kicking. Focusing on the centerline of her spine. Straight, keeping her hips from turning. Thinking how cold her hands were. The fisherman should take up swimming, she thought.
Opening her eyes she only saw the brown of the lagoon. Swimming further out she came into the deeper, cooler water.
Six . . . The farmer’s nails were ridged with yellow. Too much alcohol? She hadn’t asked because . . . Five . . . She was meant to be objective and not ask pointed questions. Breathing. Stroking. Seawater may be his remedy.
Four . . . Three … Two . . . One . . . She stopped, flipped around. Her body remembering its turning, a memory the body holds, a memory she had from countless turns in swimming pools. Here she turned without a wall but tumbled like a ball. She counted again down from ten. She swam. She breathed to the right. And to the left. Her mouth twisted to catch only air. She stroked ten more laps. Water soothing. Made her feel flexible, weightless, free.
There were two things in life she wanted to be good at. One was swimming.