Chapter Text
Adam Kessler is halfway through a supply order for new foam rings when the front desk phone rings again.
He looks at it.
The phone keeps ringing.
On his laptop, six tabs sit open: pool chemicals, replacement whistles, infant swim diaper and rash guard guidelines, a half-finished email to maintenance about the loose bracket near lane two, and one hockey article he absolutely didn’t open as preparation.
It was there when he clicked through the local sports page. That’s all. A headline, a familiar name, one careless tap, nothing more dramatic than that.
Rozanov fined for post-game comments.
Big surprise. Man gets rich on ice and somehow every dumb thing out of his mouth becomes personality.
The phone rings a fourth time, and Adam lets it, mostly out of spite and partly because picking up too fast feels like losing. By now the sound has a face. Worse, it has shoulders, bad temper, and a few unanswered opportunities to behave like a normal parent.
Finally, because apparently this is who he is now, Adam picks it up.
“Northline Aquatics, this is Adam. How can I—”
“There is something else.”
Adam closes his eyes.
No hello. No name. No attempt to pretend this is a normal hour for a normal person to make his third phone call of the week about a thirty-minute baby swim class.
“Mr. Rozanov,” Adam says. “It’s 9:18.”
A pause.
“Yes?”
“At night.”
Another pause, shorter this time. “You answered.”
Adam’s eyelid gives one small, humiliating twitch.
Of course he did. The one time he didn’t, Neil came out with his soft manager voice and said something about high-profile families, reasonable accommodation, good press for the facility, all the little phrases people use when they want Adam to pretend a rich man’s panic has anything to do with him.
Fine. Great. Wonderful.
Ilya Rozanov gets his calls answered after hours because he is Ilya Rozanov, and Adam Kessler tells himself it looks ridiculous. Embarrassing, even. A grown man so used to being accommodated he can’t hear a phone ring without assuming it belongs to him.
Which is fine.
Great, actually.
Adam has no interest in knowing what it feels like to be worth that much trouble.
“The front desk line is for registration and urgent facility issues,” he says.
“You always say this after you answer.”
“Because you always call when you shouldn’t.”
“This is registration.”
“You registered on Tuesday.”
“This is follow-up.”
“Third follow-up. If there are still concerns, I can just call Mr. Hollander and—”
Rozanov says something in Russian. Short, sharp, definitely not meant for infant swim administration.
It’s a low blow, and Adam knows it. He also knows, from the last call, that Rozanov only does this when Hollander isn’t close enough to confiscate his phone. That makes it useful.
The man comes back louder, offended enough to sound cheerful. “First, I already told you, it is Hollander-Rozanov. Second, you are threatening me with my husband now, Adam? Sad. Very sad. But you are the one picking up after hours. Maybe you wait for me to call?”
“I am not waiting for you to—” Adam sits forward too fast, the chair giving under him with a cheap little crack. “I have much better things to do than—than sit here after closing, answering the damn phone every time you decide to panic.”
“Mm, yes. Better things.”
Adam hates the little hum more than the words. It’s the sound of Rozanov enjoying himself, and worse, enjoying Adam specifically.
His face gets hot before he can stop it.
“Better things,” he says, teeth set. “Yes.”
Rozanov hums again. “Ah, yes, probably. Like standing in your brother’s kitchen?”
“The—what?” Adam’s hand tightens around the receiver. “How do you—what kitchen?”
“In photo. On internet, Adam. You know internet, yes?” A cabinet opens on Rozanov’s end, then closes too hard. “Your brother’s wife Facebook. You do not post anything yourself, which is suspicious, but okay. You are not on offender list, so—”
A beat.
Then, muffled and furious, “Who finished Takis?”
Adam’s mouth opens.
“Anyway,” Rozanov says, coming back to the phone as if that didn’t happen. “The photo, Adam. Keep up. You are in office, yes? Pool water cannot be in your brain from there.”
“What does that even—”
“Children on floor, everyone in sweaters. Yours was ugly, by the way. Green is not your color. You stand near counter like family is punishment.”
Adam’s mouth stays open.
Nothing comes out.
Rozanov, invited by the silence, continues. “Everyone else has wife. Husband. Children. Very busy table, no? Your mother looks at you like she wants to say something.”
The inside of Adam’s mouth goes dry.
She does. Constantly. With her eyes, with her serving spoons, with the careful way she says, You work too much, honey, as if work has ever been the problem.
Adam stares at the receiver like it has grown teeth. “Are you serious?! You actually looked me up? For a thirty-minute baby class?”
“You may hold my baby in water,” Rozanov says, as if this is the most reasonable sentence ever spoken. “Of course I look you up.”
Then he adds, almost kindly, “Very sad photo, by the way.”
What the fuck.
For a second, Adam has nothing else. Just that, clean and white behind his eyes.
He should hang up.
No, that would give Rozanov satisfaction. Tell him to fuck off? Absolutely not. Neil would appear with his disappointed manager face and say escalation like Adam has started this by existing in a family photo.
His hand tightens around the receiver.
Fine. He will be professional.
“Are you sure this is how you want to talk to the man who’s going to hold your child in the water?”
For one perfect second, Ilya Rozanov has no mouth.
Ha.
Adam feels better immediately.
He tries not to enjoy it for too long. He’s not serious, obviously. He’s a swim instructor, not some guy in an alley with a tire iron, and Rozanov is, by every available metric, an unstable individual with a baby, a phone, and too much access to the internet. Still, there’s something briefly, stupidly satisfying about making him stop.
Adam spent half his teenage years losing to guys like that. Not Rozanov exactly, obviously, but the species. Fast, loud, forgiven before they even finish being unbearable.
Rozanov doesn’t know him well enough to know the threat is empty.
After three calls, two after hours, one privacy lecture, and an unsolicited review of Adam’s family life, Adam can live with that.
“This is very unprofessional,” Rozanov says finally, his voice going bright and injured at once, which Adam is learning means trouble. “You threaten nervous father in sad Ottawa pool office now? Very ugly behavior. But okay, I understand. You have whistle, no wife, too much authority for one man. You work after hours, then go home to what, quiet? One sad lamp? I get it. I am sympathetic.” He pauses, like he remembered there’s supposed to be a point buried somewhere under the insult. “Also, you are not registered child predator, and kids like you. I saw videos. So because you are fellow sportsman, because my husband says this school is good, and because I like you somewhat, I will not report.”
Adam holds the receiver away from his ear, looks at it, then puts it back. “You like me… somewhat.”
“Do not make it worse.”
“I would not have guessed.”
“You have bad phone manner, but good reviews.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Anyways,” Rozanov says, breezing past it, “I had one question before you became hostile.”
Adam pinches the bridge of his nose once, hard enough to hurt. “What’s the question this time?”
The silence goes cold.
“Oh,” Rozanov says. “Sorry. I did not know father gets limited concern about baby being thrown into pool.”
“I already told you yesterday she is not being thrown into the pool, she will be—”
“You said water acclimation and—”
“That’s what the class is!” Adam catches himself pointing at the laptop like Rozanov can see him and hates both of them for it.
“I checked the form again,” Rozanov says, the words coming tight through his teeth. “It says ‘submersion’ in brackets.”
Adam pulls the laptop closer and opens the form, because of course Rozanov made him check his own wording at 9:27 at night. There it is: parent-assisted submersion. And right under it, in the line Adam added: for older babies who are ready. Small print. Tragic obstacle for men who only read the part they plan to fight.
“She is six months,” Rozanov says, walking straight into the pause.
“I have her age on the form.”
“Six months, fourteen days, and thirty-one minutes.”
There are moments, in this job, when a parent hands you a piece of information and all you can do is sit there holding it, wondering whether the correct response is reassurance, silence, or a number for someone with better qualifications.
“Congratulations. That still rounds down to six months.”
“You do not understand,” Rozanov says, like Adam has personally failed a test. “She is little, da? Little. And she had bad month. Vaccine appointment, very unpleasant. People with needles. And this one doctor...” He stops there, but Adam hears the shape of whatever face he makes around it, the disgust dragging through the receiver. “Ugh. Never mind. Point is, she remembers. People think babies don’t remember, but they do. Maybe not here,” he says, and Adam has the awful sense he is tapping his own temple, “but body remembers. She is not the same after. So no, we are not rushing her into water like she is navy seal because some form has brackets. She is not ready. She is—”
“You haven’t even brought her yet,” Adam snaps. “You’re fighting a class she hasn’t taken. You have to let her try things before you decide she hates them. You won’t know if she doesn’t like it if you—”
“Ughhhh, you are starting to sound like him!” Rozanov bursts out, loud and miserable, and then goes silent so fast Adam can almost hear his brain catch up with his mouth.
Adam pauses. “Huh.”
The answer comes too quickly. “Never mind. I said nothing.”
“Like who?”
“No one.”
“Your husband?”
“I said no one.”
“You absolutely meant your husband.”
“Do not tell him I said this,” Rozanov says at once, panic sharpening his voice. “Actually, you do not even know who I mean. Correct? You know nothing. You are pool man.”
Adam looks around the empty office, almost hopefully, as if someone else might be there to confirm this is happening.
Rozanov pushes on. “Point is, I know my baby.”
“Why are you bringing her, then?”
There. He says it.
At this point, Adam honestly thinks not bringing her would be better for everyone involved. Better for Elena, probably. Better for Rozanov’s blood pressure. Better for Adam, who wouldn’t have to spend Saturday morning looking at this smug, successful bastard trying to cosplay a reasonable family man while threatening swim staff over one word in brackets.
Rozanov goes quiet.
Then, through his teeth, “Certain people think I am too… what is word? Overbearing? Yes, this.”
Adam closes his eyes and leans back in the chair. If he has to be trapped inside a stranger’s marital argument about baby swim, he might as well take the pressure off his lower back.
“Certain people,” Rozanov continues, with the carefulness of a man placing explosives under every syllable, “read many baby books.”
“You don’t?”
“I have shelf,” Rozanov snaps. “This is not point. Point is, certain people think you do not stop at first inconvenience because baby makes face. Maybe baby tries. Maybe baby likes. Maybe baby becomes swimmer, I don’t know.”
Adam rubs two fingers hard against his temple and thinks, with sudden longing, about the vending machine near the staff entrance. Terrible coffee, stale protein bar, maybe the sad little bag of pretzels if no one took it.
Rozanov found speed now. Bad sign.
“She should not be scared of water. She is brave, I know. The bravest. Maybe a little cautious now, yes, because she suffered medical betrayal and trauma, but this is not my fault. I am not making her afraid. I am responding to facts.”
Something thumps softly on his end of the line.
Rozanov pauses. “What was I saying?”
Adam takes a slow breath through his nose.
“Right,” Rozanov says, recovering immediately. “You do not understand because you have your lamp and your quiet apartment and your work, but Elena, moya malyshka, she looks at me with these eyes, Adam. These eyes. What am I supposed to do? Ignore? Let her suffer? No. I respond.”
“Mr. Rozanov.”
“And then certain people say I am making her nervous, but I am not making her nervous. I am observing signals, which is different, and if she does not want—”
“Mr. Rozanov.”
“What?”
“No one dunks babies in beginner swim.”
Adam glances back at the hockey article on his screen. Rozanov stares out from the podium photo, jaw set, shoulders wide enough to make the sponsor backdrop look decorative. Adam knows that look. Not personally. God, no. From clips, post-game scrums, the occasional interview he absolutely didn’t watch twice. Same flat, unfriendly stare he gives referees, reporters, anyone who makes the mistake of standing between him and whatever he has decided belongs to him.
Adam minimizes the tab.
There’s movement on the other end of the line. A rustle, a soft thud, Rozanov muttering something in Russian under his breath, then the distant sound of a door opening and closing.
When his voice comes back, it’s lower and tight with urgency, like the reasonable half of the household might be closing in. “Listen to me. I have to go, so I say this once, okay? Elena, she is very… fragile, da? Soft. Her neck is still, you know, not for reckless activity. She has little ribs. Very little. And when she is surprised, she does this thing with her hands, like this, and then she looks at you like you personally made world worse. You have to be careful with her.”
Adam plants his elbow on the desk and drags his hand up over his face, fingers catching briefly at his hairline before he grips there and holds on.
For a hockey player, Rozanov produced something made of milk skin and bird bones. Which is fine. Adam handled tiny babies all the time. Premature babies. Furious babies. Babies whose parents watched his hands like he was performing surgery instead of teaching them how to sit in warm water without panic. He’s good with them. Annoyingly good, considering Rozanov keeps talking like Adam needs a child of his own before he can understand the revolutionary concept of being careful with one.
He doesn’t have one. Fine. Great observation. Neither does he have a wife, a husband, a family table arranged around him, or whatever else Rozanov thinks he knows from one family photo and a complete lack of shame.
That does not mean Adam doesn’t know babies.
It means he hasn’t found the person he wants to have them with. Or hasn’t looked hard enough. Or looked badly. Or decided, at some point, that wanting things is less humiliating if he keeps the want theoretical.
Not the point.
The point is that none of those parents called him every day to explain the concept of ribs.
The media would have a field day with this, Adam thinks, looking past the dark office window toward the empty pool. Ilya Rozanov, public menace, reduced to a one-man safety committee over beginner swim. Unfortunately, Rozanov already made sure Adam knew exactly what would happen if any part of this became public, and he hadn’t sounded stable enough for Adam to test the warning.
“I am careful with babies,” he says, because somehow the fastest way out of this conversation is reassuring what sounds like a six-foot-whatever panic response.
“You do not know my baby. Elena does not like being rushed. Or hats. And she has—”
Somewhere behind him, a voice says, “Ilya?”
There he is.
The high-functioning one. God bless him. The one with email access and enough intact judgment to notice when his husband disappeared with a phone.
Rozanov goes silent.
Adam waits.
“Ilya,” Shane Hollander says again, closer now. “Are you on the phone?”
“Yes,” Rozanov says, without missing a beat. “One big pepperoni.”
Adam slaps a hand over his own forehead hard enough that the sound probably carries through the receiver.
For a second, he just gapes.
“No, no mushrooms,” Rozanov continues, suddenly animated. “Extra cheese. Garlic sauce.” A pause, then louder, to nobody believable, “What do you mean no garlic sauce? This is criminal.”
Adam leans back in the chair again, puts his feet up on the edge of the desk, and closes his eyes.
There’s probably some version of his life, somewhere far enough back to still annoy him, where he becomes the sort of man people write articles about instead of the sort of man who reads them alone after closing. One where the accident doesn’t happen, where his body doesn’t start negotiating with him before it should, where he has better shoulders, cleaner turns, a name that means something outside a pool schedule and a family group chat.
In that version, maybe Ilya Rozanov doesn’t call him at 9:18 p.m. to argue about infant swim while pretending, badly, to order pizza. Maybe he calls him for something normal. A fundraiser, a training thing, some cross-sport charity event where hockey players and swimmers stand around in fitted shirts and pretend not to measure each other. They aren’t even that far apart in age. Adam has seen athletes from different disciplines become friends before, knows that easy, ugly closeness between men who understand what a body can give and take and ruin.
In that version, Adam might also have to speak to reporters, so. Mixed blessings.
Christ. What is he even doing?
He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. He’s tired. That’s all. Tired, hungry, still in an office after closing, listening to Ilya Rozanov fake-order pizza while his husband tries to catch him lying in real time.
He should hang up. Obviously.
Still, the receiver stays against his ear.
Not because he cares. He doesn’t. Caring would be insane. He’s only listening because Rozanov is still talking, because the lie is terrible, because there’s a husband in the next room and a baby somewhere in the house and dinner being invented out loud as a cover story.
A whole loud, stupid life pressing through the line like background noise Adam has no business wanting to understand.
Annoying.
Rozanov is still going.
“Yes, two drinks. No, not diet. Why would I want sad Coke?”
Adam tips his head back against the chair and listens.