drugged from too much summer. If they were to waken to the quick licks of light playing on the walls, they would find him hip-deep in the sea, listening to the bell tolling from its buoy, marking the first leg of his journey. He turns and waves to the empty windows, ignoring the pain lumped hollow under his arm. He takes a last look along the shore and sets out through water colder than the lakes he grew up in, thicker somehow and darker, even the sand ribbed like a washboard seems closer as it deepens, his long arms churning the surface as though he were back home in the faculty pool, matching stroke for stroke with his office mate, far more than the game of it pushing them on to the tiles and back, head over heels in turns, neither admitting to keeping score; his record growing worse during the last of winter and all of spring. He can't help looking back and sees the roof silent and dry, its shingles shrunken now to one, suggesting the pace he has set for himself; he slows and stops, allowing his legs to settle beneath him, the buoy in sight, a few more football fields away. He imagines throwing a pass and watches it sail the distance before striking the bell, breaking the steady beat of it, the gong making the water tremble; he feels it across the shoulders and down through the groin. The water on his lips tastes more