The Blue Chalk at Lane Six

The city pool closes at nine, and by ten to nine it is almost empty. The last swimmers wrap themselves in towels and shuffle toward the changing rooms, leaving long wet footprints on the tiles. Ozan, nineteen years old, is in his second month as an evening lifeguard. He walks the length of the pool with a whistle he has never needed to blow.

His job at closing is simple. He checks the lanes, the toilets and the benches. Then he walks out through the side door to make sure that no child has been forgotten on the pavement. Tonight, in the orange light of the street lamp, he finds something else.

On the grey stone beside the door, someone has drawn a large blue whale in chalk. It is a careful drawing. The whale has a white belly, a tiny eye, and a curved line of water rising from its back. Next to the whale lies a short stub of blue chalk, worn down almost to nothing.

Ozan crouches and picks it up. The chalk is warm from the lamp and leaves a blue powder on his fingers. He looks at the whale for a long moment. Then he checks his watch, because the cleaner will hose down the pavement at nine, and the whole drawing will be gone in ten minutes.

Edin, the cleaner, is already unrolling the hose when Ozan reaches the corner. He is a quiet man with a moustache and a bad knee, and he has worked at the pool longer than anyone can remember.

"Wait," Ozan says. "Please don't wash the pavement yet."

Edin looks at him over his glasses. "It is the same every night, my friend. I wash it at nine. Nothing important is ever on this pavement."

"There is a whale," says Ozan.

Edin sighs, walks to the door, and studies the drawing in silence. Then he turns off the water with a small, practical twist of his wrist. "Five minutes," he says. "After that, the whale goes to the sea."

Ozan understands that five minutes is a gift, and that he should use it well. He holds up the stub of chalk. "Somebody left this. I should return it to whoever owns it."

He takes it first to the front desk, where the receptionist is counting coins into a plastic tray. She is a cheerful woman who knows the name of every regular, and she glances at the chalk without much interest.

"That belongs to the swimming instructor," she says. "She teaches the beginners on Tuesdays, and she draws on the pavement to explain strokes."

"It's a whale," Ozan says.

"She draws all kinds of animals. Take it to her, she's in the staff room."

The instructor is sitting with her shoes off, eating an orange. She turns the chalk over in her fingers and shakes her head.

"I use white chalk, and I draw on a board, not on the ground. Besides, I am the worst drawer in the whole city." She laughs. "Whoever made your whale is much better than I am. Ask Edin. He knows who comes and goes around here."

Ozan returns to the side door with the chalk still in his hand. Edin has moved a bench to the wall and sits down with a groan, his knee stretched out in front of him. He looks at the stub of chalk, then at the whale, then at Ozan.

"You went to the front desk and the staff room," Edin says. "Of course. People always look for an owner in the offices. The owner is usually outside, waiting for his mother."

"I don't understand."

"Neither did I, at first." Edin rubs the knee, and a slow smile appears under his moustache. "A boy comes here every evening with his mother. She works late in the café on the next street, and the boy waits outside the pool until she finishes. Last week I found a chalk heart on this pavement. The week before it was a bicycle. Each night I hose it away, and each night something new appears."

"So he draws them knowing you will wash them off?"

"I think that is the point," says Edin. "A drawing that lasts is a thing to look at. A drawing that disappears is a thing you have to make again."

Ozan looks down at the stub of chalk in his palm. It is so short that it has almost no shape left. Whoever owns it has drawn a lot of whales and bicycles, and has probably never received a new piece.

At that moment, a small figure appears at the corner of the building. It is a boy of about nine, in a coat too large for him, with a school bag hanging off one shoulder. He stops dead when he sees two men standing over his whale.

"I'm sorry," the boy says quickly. "I know that I'm not allowed to draw here. I'll go."

"You are not in trouble," Ozan says. He kneels down so that his face is level with the boy's. "I found something of yours."

He opens his hand. The boy stares at the chalk for a second, and then at Ozan, and then at the chalk again. He takes it carefully, with the tips of two fingers, as if it might still belong to someone else.

"It was getting too small," the boy whispers. "I could not hold it properly any more. I thought I had lost it."

"It was waiting for you," Edin says solemnly. "In my experience, good chalk always does."

Ozan feels in his pocket. At the bottom, beside a folded bus ticket, he finds a second piece of chalk. He took it from the instructor's board without thinking. It is white and almost new. He puts it in the boy's hand next to the blue stub.

"It's for the clouds," he says. "Whales need something to look at."

The boy nods very seriously. Then he walks to the edge of the drawing and kneels. With the white chalk he draws a small cloud above the whale, and then another. His tongue pokes out between his teeth as he works.

Edin switches on his torch and holds it over the pavement so that the boy can see. He does not say anything about the hose. It stands coiled against the wall, its end dripping a little onto the stone.

When the cloud is finished, the boy stands and looks at his work. Then he moves a few steps to the left, to the blank space beside the whale. There he draws a long straight line that rises from the ground toward the wall. At the top he draws a small square with a dark circle inside it.

"What is that?" Ozan asks.

The boy only shrugs and keeps drawing. It looks like a window, high on a wall, with a light behind it.

Ozan glances at Edin. Edin shakes his head very slightly, and the hose stays where it is.