Private Rites

by Julia Armfield

The leisure center situated on the thirteenth floor of the apartment block near work costs too much for what it is, but Agnes pays the entrance fee three times a week in order to swim in comparative silence and not have to think, for an hour, about dinner or her taxes or the number of times she’s rescheduled her cervical smear. She is not always lucky enough to be the only person at the pool, although the nature of her work allows her to pick odd times. There are any number of ways to be annoying in a public pool, even during designated lane swim, and Agnes is fairly sure that the list she’s compiled is more or less exhaustive. Men who join the medium lane, swim two incredibly dramatic lengths and then stop at the shallow end to breathe loudly for twenty minutes. Women in swimming caps who spend what seems like hours adjusting their goggles poolside only to overtake you with a school-teamy front crawl the second they start. People who swim too slowly. People who swim the wrong way. Anyone who chooses to do the butterfly, which is a stroke for cunts. Agnes can never tell which of them she hates the most and tries to avoid them all indiscriminately.