A whistle blows.

Folks, please exit the pool. Captain’s pool, everybody. Captain’s pool.

I get all my best thinking done in the water, so occasionally I have the lifeguards clear the Olympic sized pool on the Lido so I can get in as many laps as I need until my head is clear.

The other pools remain open ladies and gentlemen. Hey kiddo, don’t look at me like that. This is your captain we’re talking about. Your captain requires some swim time. She has some decisions to make, and since she is the very will that moves this ship forward, we should probably let her do what needs to be done to make sure the decisions she makes are the right ones.

To navigate the water you need to let the water envelop you every once in a while. I’d swim in the Ocean if I could, and I do occasionally. I drop anchor and dive in for a bit, but these waters are infested with sharks. The pool will have to do.

That’s not to say— Ma’am, please. I’m your lifeguard. Stop interrupting me unless you want your children to die. Do you want your children to die? Then you should let me finish my announcement so I can get over to the other pools and keep an eye on them. Thank you. Now that’s not to say that the captain can make wrong decisions. If it’s the captain’s decision, it’s the right one and you all consented to that when you bought your tickets. But your captain and mine, she does not take her duty lightly. Before she so much as gives the order to add Diet Dr. Pepper to the soda fountain in the Burger n’ Burrito Snack Hut on E deck, she does some soul searching. For our captain, that soul searching involves a swim. Hey asshole, who cares if you’re a dad? Think because you’re a dad you get to tell a lifeguard when the pool is open or closed? Get your finger out of my face, sir. Get your finger out of my face, sir.

I need to exhaust myself. I need to expend energy keeping myself afloat, preventing my death at the hands of the water that is my home. I need to quiet my thoughts by devoting all my strength to staying alive. The water will respect me for it, and it will provide my mind a current toward the correct shore.

Have a drink. Sit poolside and have a drink everybody. Look at that sun above you. The sea all around you. So much beauty, and here you are becoming furious at a lifeguard because his captain, your captain, the very woman who is steering you out of the reach of pirates and away from rogue waves while you frolic in a man-made paradise, that woman would like to take a swim. Here’s an idea, passengers, how about instead of being dicks, you all take a seat and have a drink. Don’t worry, I’ll stay alert and keep watch while your kids pee in the six other goddamn pools they have to choose from.

The arguing stops when I step on deck. No one expects to see their captain in a keep-no-secrets two-piece, but they can wash their eyes out later. I’d swim nude if I could, the water shouldn’t be deprived the touch of a single inch of my skin, but, unfortunately, children and whatnot.

Captain’s pool, everybody. Captain’s pool.

No one says a word for the ten steps I take before diving into a lane. The fathers and mothers alike, they’re all transfixed for those ten steps as if I were about to dive off a cliff. Would that I could. Would that I could enter that pool with enough velocity to send the water screaming through my nose and mouth into my lungs, arms, legs, belly, instantly bloating my body to burst with the sharp pop of a bubble. Make me elemental, nothing to fear. Nothing to remember. No half-brother reclining in the infirmary, waiting there to answer the only question I have, waiting to tell me just where the hell my father was going when he died.

All yours Skip.

When I surface, Lifeguard Ollie is barefooting it over to the splash-around with a handful of lingering dads and moms. Have all those dads and moms come clean about the secret kids they’ve got hidden away someplace? Will they make the proper introductions, or will they wait for fate to bring them together?

But it wasn’t fate, was it? My father taught me this route. Showed me there’s no better channel for a boat to cross. I can’t help but think this reunion was orchestrated. It was inevitable that one day I’d come along and give my half-brother a ride home.