Crossing The Goal Line. Kim Findlay

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СКАЧАТЬ and rivers, and lots of swimming pools. Also, swimming is fun. It’s really good exercise. It’s a sport, too. Have you seen it in the Olympics? I used to compete for Canada, and I’m now coaching the swim team at the club here to race in swim meets. Maybe someday one of you can represent Canada as a swimmer.”

      Bridget wanted to inspire them if she could. She’d loved competing, and she thought it taught a lot of life lessons.

      “Were you any good?” It was that boy. Bridget mentally reviewed the attendance sheet in her mind. Ah, yes. His name was Tony. He’d apparently decided to challenge her from the start.

      Bridget looked him in the eyes. “Did you have a specific lap time in mind?” There was a pause. Tony wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “I won a lot of races,” Bridget continued, “but I was never good enough to make the Olympic team. However, I’m pretty sure I can still swim faster than anyone you know.” Bridget wasn’t boasting. She knew what she could do.

      Tony crossed his arms. “You can’t beat a guy. My dad says girls can’t beat guys.”

      And just like that, Tony had pushed Bridget’s biggest button. She had spent her entire life trying to prove that girls could do everything guys could do. It was a never-ending task. “I think your dad is mistaken, Tony.” Bridget indicated the man swimming in the lane. “He’s swimming pretty well. You think I can take him?”

      Tony hesitated. He hadn’t expected that. He wanted to save face, but wasn’t sure what to do.

      The other kids were impressed. “Can you really swim faster than him?”

      Bridget assessed the swimmer. Adult male, tall, good physical shape, but yeah, she could take him.

      Bridget called to Tad to look after the class. She pulled off her heavy glasses, bane of her life, pulled on her swimming goggles, and strode over to the end of the pool. The goggles didn’t help much with her vision, but she knew this place like the back of her hand, and she could navigate blindfolded.

      The man in the lane may have been swimming pretty well, but he wasn’t a racer. There was wasted movement: technique issues she could see even without her glasses.

      He was about halfway up the lane, swimming away from her, and she paused, caught her breath and pushed off in her starting dive.

      The pool was Bridget’s element. When she was a kid, she had wanted to be a professional hockey player just like her brothers had, but her poor vision messed with her depth perception and limited her ability to play a fast-moving game on the ice. Instead, she’d channeled that drive into swimming, and she’d excelled.

      She surfaced, having picked up half the distance the other swimmer had on her. She started her smooth, sure stroke, slicing through the water with precision and power. She was within a couple of body lengths by the time he hit the wall, and she knew she had him.

      Recreational swimmers don’t train on turns, and she had.

      She came out of her turn another length ahead of him. She could sense he’d become aware that this was a race, and increased the tempo of his strokes, but she made it to the end of the pool with lengths to spare.

      She hoped her temper hadn’t led her astray. In her experience, men could get upset if a woman beat them. Her focus was supposed to be on her class, but maybe she’d earned some respect from her students, especially Tony. That should make him willing to listen to her. She wanted to continue with that momentum, so she lifted herself out of the pool, no longer aware of the other swimmer, until he spoke.

      “That was impressive. Do you take private students?”

      Bridget had pulled off her goggles, and when she turned, the man was a blur. She looked at him fuzzily.

      “Sorry, no. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was making a point for my class.” She nodded her head toward the blurs that were her students. Perhaps the hardest part of this job, other than the Weasel, was being nice to members who were not always nice themselves. She added a perfunctory smile. At least he hadn’t pitched a fit about losing to her.

      And the rest of the class did go smoothly. Tony was silenced, and the other students were suitably impressed. It wasn’t until all the kids had been returned to the changing rooms that she became aware that the lane swimmer had finished and left. She shrugged. She wasn’t sure if she’d see him again. Her plans for the Weasel included terminating the lane swimming during her class, so she hoped she wouldn’t.

      Bridget’s position as swim coach involved being at the club early for morning practice, and again after the kids were done school for fitness training and more practice. Weekends would often involve traveling to swim meets. Since they were in Toronto, the traveling was often just across town, but at times she was gone for entire weekends.

      Her hours were irregular, but she loved her job and didn’t mind that her time off was out of sync with most people’s. She was determined to get to the Olympics, this time as a coach. She had a couple of swimmers who had tons of talent, and she found helping them was becoming as fulfilling as racing herself.

      She was teaching this swim class in what should have been her free time. She got her charges safely off to the teacher’s aide who was returning them to school, and changed into shorts and a T-shirt to do her own training. One of the perks of the job was using the facilities, and midmorning there was no one using the machines in the weight room. She liked to keep almost as fit as she required her swimmers to be.

      After she’d had a shower she would make another attempt to track down Wally.

      * * *

      SHE DIDN’T FIND him until just before her afternoon practice. When she appeared in his doorway, he flinched.

      “Hello, Wall-ter,” Bridget corrected herself. He insisted on being called by his full name, and Bridget was sure it wouldn’t be wise to let him know her nickname for him. He’d freak out over Wally, let alone Weasel.

      “I don’t know why you have so much trouble with my name,” he responded peevishly.

      Bridget ignored his comment. “I’ve got a question for you.”

      “I’m very busy.”

      “Oh, this will take only a moment. You see, the pool is booked at nine for a class I’m teaching, but somehow there was a lane swimmer there this morning.”

      Wally shuffled some stuff around his desk. “Yes, well, it’s like this...the management committee asked if I could make that arrangement for this new, ah, associate member.”

      Associate member? Bridget thought. That was a new one. But if the request came from the management committee...

      “Perhaps you could have notified me?” she asked.

      “Ah, sorry, I thought I had.” They both knew better.

      “Are you expecting any more ‘associate members’ to be wanting the pool at nine a.m.? Maybe enough to take up the entire pool?” Nine had been chosen specifically because it was after the morning swim training and lap swims for those going to work or school, and before the water aerobics classes began. It was the quietest time in the pool, except after closing.

      Nobody was being put out by her beginner class, except Wally, who didn’t like having these “freeloader” СКАЧАТЬ