The climate of the town is warm enough for the swimming pool to be open all year but it is cool enough that the lifeguard very rarely has anyone to watch. During the cooler months Jonah dusts the counters, sweeps around the pool, and watches the clouds in the sky. But mostly he sits. And as it is almost impossible to just sit and do nothing else, Jonah also loses himself in reverie. His thoughts are always on the same topic and they are never about swimming. Jonah dreams about a girl that he used to know and date and love but he does not know her anymore or date her anymore. He is still in love with her in his head. His daydreams are more than idle ponders; he escapes to a place that becomes real in his mind where he can connect again with her. He joins her in his secret place of memories where the softness of her skin still pushes up against his and the scruff of his face still finds an opposite comfort in contact with her neck; his nose in her hair. He goes to places with her - revisiting the places he has walked with her a thousand times, everyday things like shopping and driving in the car and going on day hikes and her mundane words are captured in his mind and become golden strands like strings on an angel's harp to resonate infinitely more fragile and more elegant. He transports to a place where he is with her even though she left him to go to Bangladesh; he takes her out to dinner even though she is eating whatever the orphanage where she works now is serving; he holds her soft, healthily plump, and glowing body against his to watch some mindless television show even though she is now thin and fit and has roughened her skin against mountains and weather and poverty. He does not go to the summer after graduating from college when she made the decision to leave California for a new life - a life without middle-class comforts and a life without him. These thoughts of his past love occupy his day, he does little more than think of her and watch the sky and the undisturbed water in the pool.
His travels to former times with her start to slowly dissolve as the heat becomes more intense and patrons of the pool begin to trickle in. The people disturb his day as he has to be attentive over little children and mischievous teenagers who are out on their own and determined to make the most of their new independence. The girls bubble gossip and the boys gawk in awkward awe while trying to remain super-cool. The mothers read books and magazines and check watches to get back to their houses in time to watch talk shows and get the children a snack. Jonah becomes unsettled and ungrounded without the safety of his memories. He signs people into the pool and he monitors the safety of the pool. He tells kids not to run and he warns about jumping in too shallow water. He is a polite and personable lifeguard; the mothers smile and appreciate the familiarity of him at the pool. The busier the pool is the more energetic he becomes; the more he has to do the less he has time to reminisce.
Although he is a more productive person during the hotter months he feels a spiritual disconnect. On the surface he performs like everyone performs: he is normal. But the jagged activities of the day sharpen themselves on the inside of his head and he sinks without the thoughts of her. He blazes in the heat of summer, surrounded by people in recreation. And he yearns to float on his ideas of the past.