Chapter 38 Godzilla is. inside the pool of a charity swim
Godzilla is... inside the pool of a charity swim
I do not want to do this.
The charity swim that I signed up to do with Toby is not at a swimming pool. It’s at a lido. Unheated outside pool. On a day with the strongest arctic winds of the last thirty years for this time of year.
I am alone in this physical endeavour, but Leon and Sashka have come to support me. In winter coats.
‘Why are you doing this? You don’t even like swimming,’ he asks. Quite an apt question, considering the situation.
I blow a raspberry, wondering the same.
I’ve filled the last few weeks to the brim with the most painfully awkward things. Things that I don’t like and am not good at—karaoke in public, speaking to strangers, entering talent shows that I knew I would fail at completely. I wouldn’t let myself stop until the bell on my amulet jingled.
The open audition for a West End show was particularly bad. My rendition of ‘Cell Block Tango’ will haunt me for the rest of my life. Even more annoying, I got no luck from it. I embarrassed myself in front of a hundred other auditioners for nothing.
A surprising jingle came from joining a free elderly t’ai chi class in the park. The women were so happy that I was there that I was given bags of fruit and vegetables from their allotments, which does make me worry that I wasted my luck on the free harvest.
The most stressful jingle came from work, where because of my blatant honesty, the design team had to redo weeks of work in about three days. I volunteered to help them, staying late after work, copywriting all the text for them.
What am I using my luck on, you may ask?
Every effort is going towards setting up a ‘fateful’ day for Toby. I say ‘fateful’, because it will not be fate. It will be me.
But for it to work I need to make sure that my poor luck does not get in the way.
I have done as much prep as I can, each step of the way using up as much of the good fortune as I could have mustered. But I still need the final confirmation for a submission that the entire plan rests on.
‘On your marks!’ a man shouts. In a coat. ‘Get set! Go!’
I jump into the water. Icicles pierce through my skin, leaving every inch of it as red as my face post the West End audition.
I am about 1 kilometre in when I take my first five-minute break, which I regret immediately, as being out of the water is now worse than being in.
I chew on a handful of jelly beans and jump back in.
I hit my second kilometre just after an hour, which is when things take a turn for the worse. I get a cramp, I lose my rhythm, I tap out of the race after completing 2.3 km.
‘That was honestly impressive for someone who doesn’t do any physical activity.’ Sashka is rubbing my back after I change.
My teeth keep chattering against my paper cup full of boiling tea.
A lady from the other team had to give me her extra gloves and hat.
I look at my phone: an ‘it was great filming with you’ message from Malik, a shout-out from Adzo on the work group chat, an e-mail to say my audition for the new musical was unsuccessful, but that’s not what I care about.
It’s the amulet that is dangling from it.
Silent.
Fuck.
I just need the final piece of luck. The one that will set the whole plan into motion.
The house smells like roasted green tea when I come back. Dad is whipping the hojicha powder into a foam. When he lived in Japan, Obaachan made him do tea ceremonies for the family before giving Dad her blessing to marry her daughter.
‘Hi, sweetie, did you beat them?’ he asks, seeing how I fell onto the couch, face first, legs and arms flapping lifelessly.
‘It was so bad. I couldn’t finish.’
‘That’s unlucky.’
‘You could say that again.’
‘Do you want a hojicha latte?’
It’s our version of hot chocolate. I nod, and he places a cup on the table. Part of me is certain that Japan is selling so much matcha to foreign countries on purpose to keep hojicha for themselves.
‘What’s bothering you, little one?’
‘What is the bravest thing you’ve done?’ I reach for the delicious brown drink.
He crosses his legs and thinks. I am half expecting him to say something about jump-starting his car from a tractor back when we lived in the rural inaka of Toyama.
‘When I told your mother that I loved her.’
A blow I did not expect. ‘Really?’ I ask with some stinging in my eyes.
‘Oh yeah. We worked at the same school. It could have ended so badly. But I was certain that her rejecting me could not be worse than me wondering.’
‘Do you ever feel unlucky?’
‘Never, you can’t feel unlucky with a wife and daughters like mine.’
An uncontrollable smile unfurls on my lips—to be that happy with the cards you have been dealt, maybe Dad is extremely lucky after all.
I take a long hot shower, missing Japanese hot springs, which might be the only things capable of getting that arctic shiver out of my bones. With my hair wet, I type out a text with an explanation of my feelings, how I should have said it sooner, how I don’t want him to read too much into it.
But I delete all of it and send:
Fuko: I love you.
A dull ache sings in my chest. It muffles my hearing so much that I stop feeling my heartbeat.
No response. I’m losing all hope, when a bright, relieved jingle rushes through the bell.
I open my laptop, open the website that I’ve been staring at for the last week, and press Submit.
Please work. Please work.