The Laws of Average (20 page)

Listen. I've never been called a liar. Or a faker. The children's mother, she will tell you. She'll tell you before I even tell you. See, that's why this story is even being told. “It's done,” I said, flatly and fatherly. Because it was, and it still is, and I told her so, eleven months after that Gold's Gym card expired. But you already know what she said in reply. So, so typical.

The miracle of the place isn't in its year-round heat, its silica-slick water that makes you feel invincible, as if you could dodge the oxygen and hydrogen molecules even though they are literally swimming around you as you float and turn here, your eyes afire as you slide next to me before showing me the world inside.

The miracle of the place isn't the parking lot spilling over with out-of-state license plates, their respective out-of-state stares boiling out of the windows to take their turns gawking at the alligators living here in the fucknut cold of winter, the high elevation desert plain no place for reptiles come January yet here they are nonetheless.

The miracle of the place surely isn't the cashier/pool attendant, a stringbean of a man in his forties, his long thin hair flapping against the middle of his back, his even longer and thinner smile practiced and imprecise for the thousands of couples he's greeted here for decades, his mind always spinning in counter-rotation to theirs, the three of them always nimble to avoid the obvious future that poises and readies itself when the pair outside his sliding glass window requests a “VIP” pool and pays for it with two crisp twenty dollar bills still warm from the ATM just across the parking lot.

The miracle of the place isn't the thick PVC drainpipe anymore than it's the thick steps descending downdown-downdown anymore than it's the lone plastic patio chair pretending not to watch from its vantage point on the concrete slab overhead anymore than it's the dressing area always clammy like a 19
^th
century mudroom anymore than it's the thin wooden door to the outside where you've purposely abandoned our big cotton towels to chill.

No.

The miracle of this place is the pulse of you, the words on your lips right as you bite down on them, the flutter in your eyes matching the one in my heart.

You. The One.

Promise me the moon. No, seriously, go ahead. Okay now grab it. It's smaller than you think. Hold it in your hand but don't give it to me. Put it wherever you want, and it will stay there (I promise), but you can never give it to me. That's what makes a promise a promise. Promise me you'll keep this promise. Which is about keeping another promise. Now promise that you'll never ever ever come back. This shouldn't give you any trouble, not a single ounce of it. Where you are is a place where trouble is only a figment of someone else's imagination. See why they call it Heaven?

TREVOR DODGE is the author of a previous collection of short fiction,
Everyone I Know Lives on Roads
(Chiasmus 2006), and a novella,
Yellow #10
(Eraserhead 2003). His stories have appeared in print and online journals such as
Sleepingfish, Gargoyle, Notre Dame Review, Plazm, Golden Handcuffs Review, Hobart, Gobshite Quarterly, Natural Bridge, Nailed Magazine
and
Portland Review
, among many others. He collaborated with Lance Olsen on the writing anti-textbook
Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing
(Guide Dog 2012) and hosts the creative arts podcast Possible Architect. He is fiction editor of the literary journal
Clackamas Literary Review
, lives and teaches in Portland, OR, and can be found online at:
www.trevordodge.com.