It was very dark, the sky was low and starless, and it took a while for me to see, once again, the diving board a shade lighter than the night, and to distinguish the water from the chairs that surrounded the far side of the pool.
I pushed the straps of her bathing suit down but she said no and rolled an inch away from me, and for the first time in the two weeks I'd known her she asked me a question about me.
"Where are your parents?" she said.
"Tucson," I said. "Why?"
"My mother asked me."
I could see the life guard's chair now, white almost.
"Why are you still here? Why aren't you with them?" she asked.
"I'm not a child any more, Brenda," I said, more sharply than I'd intended. "I just can't go wherever my parents are."
"But then why do you stay with your aunt and uncle?"
"They're not my parents."
"They're better?"
"No. Worse. I don't know why I stay with them."
"Why?" she said. "Why don't I know?"
"Why do you stay? You do know, don't you?"
"My job, I suppose. It's convenient from there, and it's cheap, and it pleases my parents. My aunt's all right really ... Do I really have to explain to your mother why I live where I do?"
"It's not for my mother. I want to know. I wondered why you weren't with your parents, that's all."
"Are you cold?" I asked.
"No."
"Do you want to go home?"
"No, not unless you do. Don't you feel well, Neil?"
"I feel all right," and to let her know that I was still me, I held her to me, though that moment I was without desire.
"Neil?"
"What?"
"What about the library?"
"Who wants to know that?"
"My father," she laughed.
"And you?"
She did not answer a moment. "And me," she said finally.
"Well what about it? Do I like it? It's okay. I sold shoes once and like the library better. After the Army they tried me for a couple months at Uncle Aaron's real estate company—Doris' father—and I like the library better than that ..."
"How did you get a job there?"
"I worked there for a little while when I was in college, then when I quit Uncle Aaron's, oh, I don't know ..."
"What did you take in college?"
"At Newark Colleges of Rutgers University I majored in philosophy. I am twenty-three years old. I—"
"Why do you sound nasty again?"
"Do I?"
"Yes."
I didn't say I was sorry.
"Are you planning on making a career of the library?"
"Bren, I'm not planning anything. I haven't planned a thing in three years. At least for the year I've been out of the Army. In the Army I used to plan to go away weekends. I'm—I'm not a planner." After all the truth I'd suddenly given her, I shouldn't have ruined it for myself with that final lie. I added, "I'm a liver."
"I'm a pancreas," she said.
"I'm a—"
And she kissed the absurd game away; she wanted to be serious.
“Do you love me, Neil?”
I did not answer.
"I'll sleep with you whether you do or not, so tell me the truth."
"That was pretty crude."
"Don't be prissy," she said.
"No, I mean a crude thing to say about me."
"I don't understand," she said, and she didn't, and that she didn't pained me; I allowed myself the minor subterfuge, however, of forgiving Brenda her obtuseness. "Do you?" she said.
"No."
"I want you to."
"What about the library?"
"What about it?" she said.
Was it obtuseness again? I thought not—and it wasn't, for Brenda said, "When you love me, there'll be nothing to worry about."
"Then of course I'll love you." I smiled.
"I know you will," she said. "Why don't you go in the water, and I'll wait for you and close my eyes, and when you come back you'll surprise me with the wet. Go ahead."
"You like games, don't you?"
"Go ahead. I'll close my eyes."
I walked down to the edge of the pool and dove in. The water felt colder than it had earlier, and when I broke through and was headed blindly down I felt a touch of panic. At the top again, I started to swim the length of the pool and then turned at the end and started back, but suddenly I was sure that when I left the water Brenda would be gone. I'd be alone in this damn place. I started for the side and pulled myself up and ran to the chairs and Brenda was there and I kissed her.
"God," she shivered, "You didn't stay long."
"I know."
"My turn," she said, and then she was up and a second later I heard a little crack of water and then nothing. Nothing for quite a while.
"Bren," I called softly, "are you all right?" but no one answered.
I found her glasses on the chair beside me and held them in my hands. "Brenda?"
Nothing.
"Brenda?"
"No fair calling," she said and gave me her drenched self. "Your turn," she said.
This time I stayed below the water for a long while and when I surfaced again my lungs were ready to pop. I threw my head back for air and above me saw the sky, low like a hand pushing down, and I began to swim as though to move out from under its pressure. I wanted to get back to Brenda, for I worried once again—and there was no evidence, was there?—that if I stayed away too long she would not be there when I returned. I wished that I had carried her glasses away with me, so she would have to wait for me to lead her back home. I was having crazy thoughts, I knew, and yet they did not seem uncalled for in the darkness and strangeness of that place. Oh how I wanted to call out to her from the pool, but I knew she would not answer and I forced myself to swim the length a third time, and then a fourth, but midway through the fifth I felt a weird fright again, had momentary thoughts of my own extinction, and that time when I came back I held her tighter than either of us expected.
"Let go, let go," she laughed, "my turn—"
"But Brenda—"
But Brenda was gone and this time it seemed as though she'd never come back. I settled back and waited for the sun to dawn over the ninth hole, prayed it would if only for the comfort of its light, and when Brenda finally returned to me I would not let her go, and her cold wetness crept into me somehow and made me shiver. "That's it, Brenda. Please, no more games," I said, and then when I spoke again I held her so tightly I almost dug my body into hers, "I love you," I said, "I do."
- Philip Roth