He was one of the regular swimmers at the Piscine Pontoise, the famous Art Deco pool in the Latin Quarter. He swam two or three times each week. Sometimes it was a slog from beginning to end. But sometimes his mind grew quiet and calm, and the coordinated rhythms – the rhythm of the arms and the legs and especially the rhythm of the breath – took over and drove him forward, almost effortlessly. And so it had been on this particular afternoon. He finished eighty laps. Felt he could have kept going. Forever. He leapt out of the pool, retrieved his towel and slippers, walked halfway along the pool’s length, and sat down in a plastic chair. Relaxed and invigorated, he watched the swimmers circle the lanes. Seven lanes. Six or seven swimmers sharing a lane. Self-segregated by speed. The faster lanes and the slower lanes.
He stood and headed toward the showers. As he walked along the width of the pool, at the deep end, he looked down, at nothing in particular, just to see the swimmers make their turns. For the briefest interval, two or three seconds, he saw the deformed, stunted fingers and thumbs splayed across the edge of the pool. He felt a shock of recognition and stopped. He knew these hands from a hundred million years ago. From deep in his past. From a place far away. And with a certainty that was both exhilarating and frightening. He watched the hands disappear, the swimmer turn....
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