Some events in life you think, you hope, you’re convinced, will never happen, even though you know they will

September 1964

NO one came to her rescue.

Not that she needed rescuing. Marjorie was a strong swimmer, her muscles toned from years of lessons in the local YMCA. She’d hated that pool, with the strange sound of children’s shouting voices echoing off the steam-covered ceiling, the lifeguard’s shrill whistle, the choking smell of chlorine, and, of course, the weekly argument she had with Mother about attending. But here, surrounded and embraced by the blue waters of the park’s manmade lake, and with Earth’s unfriendly voices silenced for at least a short while, she again felt a surge of joy, a certainty that one day, one day soon, she would find the freedom she’d been yearning for all these years.

When she reached the shore and clambered out, dripping wet, she was laughing.

She found Danny calmly tying up the boat.

“Hey, why didn’t you dive in after me?” she shouted, shaking the water off her soaked T-shirt and pants like some overactive little puppy.

“You looked just fine, like those unsinkable rubber duckies I used to play with in the bathtub. So why should I ruin a perfectly good pair of pants?”

They began to walk through the park and, drying up in the late-summer sun, she brought up the point again, half laughing, half serious. “But it would have been, you know, heroic for you to plunge into the depths and rescue the damsel in distress.”

“I’m not heroic. I’m logical.”

She looked at him, her eyes thoughtful. “Yes, yes you are. Like one of those adding machines that accountants use.”

“Bookkeepers. We accountants are too busy helping rich people cheat the government.”

Marjorie giggled.

“Anyway,” Danny continued, “I won’t be able to convince you that accounting is a perfectly valid profession, so let’s just agree to disagree.”

“I’d rather agree to argue some more.”

“Yes, I know you would, but it’s much too sunny for fighting. I’ll walk you home and you can show me that Mustang you love so much.”

But when they came to the rather seedy block where Marjorie had parked the car, the Mustang wasn’t there.

Some events in life you think, you hope, you’re convinced, will never happen, even though you know they will.

And then they happen.