Donato walks through the turnstile of the Nautical Union Guild, ignores the surprised expression on the face of the employee working on the door, walks towards the Olympic-sized swimming pool. He changes in the changing room. He does his warm-ups and stretches under the awning over the staircase you take to get to the swimming pool from the changing rooms. There are other members swimming in lanes one, four and six. He greets the employee who looks after the pools, acting as lifeguard to the members. It’s his first time here. He puts on the silver silicone swimming cap, goggles, dives into the end of lane three, he forces himself into a front crawl for the first two hundred metres and then onto his back kicking his legs, he forces himself to swim until he stops in the middle of the pool, attaches himself to one of the buoys, coughing, he’s swallowed some water. The employee who looks after the swimming pools gets up (it must be four metres deep where he is — not a place to let someone play at being ill), takes off his flip-flops, his t-shirt with the Nautical Union Guild logo on it and dives into the pool, straight into lane two. Donato is still clinging to the buoy. ‘Everything ok, kid?’ asks the club employee. ‘I’m fine … I just felt dizzy’ (he is no longer coughing, just breathing anxiously). ‘Have you been drinking, by any chance?’ he asks. ‘No. I got a bit dizzy … It was strange … I lost concentration, I felt a kind of vertigo … I started sinking as if … ’ he coughs and stops, ‘as if suddenly I didn’t know how to swim any more.’ It had been a long time since he’d gone swimming and since he had taken any risks (Donato took a risk). ‘Come on, get those goggles and that cap off so the blood can flow more easily in your head. I’ll come with you to the side,’ says the club employee. And, hanging on to the floats separating the lanes, they make their way to the side of the pool. ‘Better?’ he asks. ‘I’m a bit drowsy.’ He was stupid. ‘Can we get you over to First Aid?’ he suggests. ‘No, I just want to get out, get my clothes on and go back home.’ They go down to the changing room. The employee who looks after the swimming pool asks the employee on the door to call a taxi. They don’t have to wait long. The boy gets himself ready. The two of them walk to the entrance of the club, the employee who looks after the swimming pool asks if he has money and if he really is ok. Donato gets into the taxi, the club employee gives him a goodbye wave. Donato feels a sense of calm, a peacefulness he has never experienced before. There’s no doubt about it, he’s high on medication. The car pulls away, and he thinks that being high makes it easier to accept and understand what it’s like to be alone.