Flat Water Tuesday by Ron Irwin Page A

tell Channing you weren’t going to try out, that you only want to row in the single.”
    “I’m really not psyched to be rowing on a team.”
    “That’s ridiculous. Just get over your hang-up, get on the team and start rowing—and winning. We can’t lose the Warwick Race again, we just can’t. The dumb alumni will blame me and say it’s because I couldn’t steer. Paul was good last year. But you have to be better. You can’t just be this cocky boy from upstate New York. You have to rock.”
    “I’ve never had to rely on others to win. Never had to trust somebody else to steer a boat I was in. I mean, seriously, the whole idea around a coxswain is … what? So you steer, and…? You’re really sort of the coach’s spy, right?”
    She flushed again. “That’s not true! I’m a member of the God Four. I hate Channing as much as you guys do.”
    “But it’s not like he’s ever going to cut you. And if you’re so important to the team why isn’t it called the God Five?” I was winding her up because I liked the way her eyes looked when she was mad but I could see I had gone too far.
    “That’s just the sort of sexist crap I have to put up with all the time. You guys can’t see where you’re going when you go down that course. I can. I steer you. I can see the other boat. I’m the one who pushes you through them. You? What do you do, genius? You look at the back of the guy in front of you. I have to see everything, judge if the other team is dying and when we make a move. I’m the brain of the boat. Without me, you guys wouldn’t even get the boat down to the water. I give the command for hands on, to lift it, to lower it to the water and hold. I get you out there so you can do one thing: row. At the rating I tell you. And until I tell you to stop.” She was pretty riled up.
    “Yeah? And what about the seven months of daily training we have to put in?” I thought I might as well go for broke.
    “What about it? You don’t need to drop almost a fifth of your body weight and half starve yourself to do it, Carrey. And still be able to run with you guys in the freezing cold. You try running those miles on an empty stomach. You don’t need to keep track of the training schedules for a dozen rowers, or organize every session in the rowing tanks, or monitor everyone’s erg scores and weights records. You just have to show up.”
    “Okay, okay. Channing just gave me the big teamwork lecture.”
    “It’s not about teamwork. It’s about something else that’s like it.”
    “Why do you do it?”
    “Why do I do what?”
    “Why be a cox for some retro guy’s rowing team? I mean, what’s the point if you think it’s so awful?”
    “Oh, God. What’s the point in anything? I’m good at it, I guess.”
    We had to get out of there sooner or later. But she was on a roll. She looked at me sideways, as if she was aiming her words. “Why do you row?”
    I waited a second and it was my turn to change the subject. “I was getting tired of seeing you in class and wondering what you’re like.”
    “Am I what you expected?”
    “Put the cigarette in the can and let’s get out of here before they bust us.”
    “Let them.”
    “Do you really want to finish that? You don’t.” I held out the can.
    She took one last drag, slid the rest into the can. I heard it fizz when it hit bottom. She waved away the smoke between us, as if she was waving at me, trying to get my attention and also saying good-bye. She turned and started walking away. She knew I was watching her go, too, watching her walk the whole hall until she disappeared through the door to the stairs. I couldn’t drop my cigarette fast enough into the can with hers. I felt like choking. You had to wonder what people were thinking, smoking those things.
    *   *   *
    Carolyn thought this might be the best work I had ever done for the channel. It consisted mostly of underwater footage I had snagged with pan-cams over the course of eight dives