The Fifteen Minute Novel is a novel written fifteen minutes at a time with each week day’s section starting with the sentence from the previous day. At least it is attempting to be a novel. For now I am just aiming at one continuous story, worked on for fifteen minutes each day. Started Friday January 1st, 2021 (in case you want to search for the beginning. I can’t wait to see where it ends up. It could be good, or it could be a mess. We’ll have to see. For now, here is today’s fifteen minutes.
Day 167: ‘I suppose I could look for one,’ he thought as he bit into his sandwich.
‘I suppose I could look for one,’ he thought as he bit into his sandwich. James recalled he used to like swimming. In fact he used to start his day with a few laps. It was part of his wake up ritual. Growing up the family had a pool in the back yard. For the most part it was a backdrop for parties. The pool was surrounded by large patios space and an outdoor kitchen. The grounds outside the pool area were landscaped into lush gardens. James remembered his parents having parties where the adults circled the pool, looking at the colored lights flashing through the water as they sipped their drinks and nibbled at the food of the night.
Occasionally there would be families invited over and a few of the kids would play in the water, but those events were few and far between. When the adults gathered generally babysitters were found for the children and James was settled upstairs to play quietly. He assumed that when his step brothers came along they were as well.
In the mornings, the pool was his. It was heated so he could use it year round. He would wake up, visit the restroom, then pull on his swim trunks. He did laps until the sleep was cleared from his muscles and limbs. Then he would return to his space, shower and go down to breakfast. He couldn’t remember when the habit started, but he remembered that it was one of the few things he missed when he went off to college.
James finished his sandwich and disposed of the wrappings. As he tidied the kitchen from his dinner, James looked down at his middle aged body and tried to remember the last time he actually swum any form of laps. He remembered attending a pool party a few years prior, but by then he had become one of the adults holding a cocktail and walking around the edge.
Kitchen tidied. James went upstairs and took out his laptop. “A gym with a pool might have other amenities, classes and training things that I could use for excuses to duck out of the Friday night drinks.”
It was reasonable, but James found himself actually anticipating the use of a pool once again. He knew that several gyms had twenty four hour memberships to suit a wide variety of schedules. He wasn’t sure if a pool would be on the list of all-hours access, but the memory of starting his day with a swim took hold and James thought it might be a fun habit to resume.
At the thought of the word habit, James stopped and stared at the computer screen before him. The search engine blinked as it waited for him to type in what he wanted to look up. Habit. He was supposed to be avoiding those.
‘But it hasn’t been a habit in decades,’ James thought. He remembered the images of him on the memorial and some of the words. No one mentioned his childhood swimming habit and there were no pictures of him in any form of swimsuit. The closest image of him near water was him in a linen suit sipping a tropical drink.
‘Which would lead people to think I might like the beach, not that I might swim laps.’ He thought about it for a few minutes, but decided there was minimal risk. James leaned into the laptop and began typing.
The list of health facilities, gyms, spas and clubs was pretty long. The list narrowed considerably when he added a swimming pool to the mix.
Ten til Midnight 