The Tuesday regular who never left

I'm at the empty pool again, the water's perfectly still, and I see him swimming his 90-minute laps even though the lane lines are gone and he's been dead six months. He doesn't see me. I'm counting his strokes like I used to, but the number keeps changing each time I look down at my stopwatch. Then the water starts whispering the names of everyone who ever swam here, and I wake up with a slick of chlorine on my tongue.