NO SWIMMING ALLOWED by Peter Nolan Smith

The weather forecast predicted a sultry summer day for September 7, 2001. My friend Alia had transported a Porsche Boxer from the UK and her high-octane convertible awaited clearance at the Newark Customs. The British diplomat asked me to accompany her to the Jersey docks and I agreed on the stipulation that we drove the two-seater north along the Hudson.

"Where to?" The blonde mother of six had left the children with her ex-husband for the day. Alia was up for most anything.

"I know a place." I extolled Lake Minnewaska Park. "I've been going up there since the 70s. Once I jumped off the cliff into the lake."

"How high?"

"Sixty feet." It felt like a hundred.

"We won't be performing any death-defying feats today."

"No, those days are over."

I was nearing fifty. The gravity transformed the water to semi-hard mud and the soles of my feet were very tender.

"We're going to Lake Awosting. Its slanted stone beach bears the scars of the Ice Age Glaciers before disappearing to the lake's blue-emerald waters."

"Fabulous, it will be my last swim before autumn." The slim blonde diplomat loved hot weather and we taxied over to the Port of Newark. Her last posting had been in Dar Es Salaam and she conversed with the Tanzanian taxi driver in Swahili.

At the entrance to the docks the Customs officials treated the UN under-assistant with the utmost deference. Oxford was her alma mater. Her family dated back to before the invention of sliced bread. The process of retrieving her car took about seven minutes. She beamed a smile of thanks to the officials and we sat in her Porsche.

"I bought this from my mother's inheritance. Sitting in it reminds me of her." Alia pressed a button. The top folded into the rear. She gave the engine some gas.

"The car sounds fast." I settled back into the leather seat and appreciated the growl of Teutonic power.

"Wait until we get on the road." Alia shifted into first and released the clutch, shedding her mother of six status for the role of a woman on the run.

The Porsche had diplomatic plates, but she ran the car below 90 on the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River. We listened to loud 1980s English Pop on the stereo. Conversation was impossible at this speed, although when we hit a deserted stretch of the Northway, Alia floored the accelerator and shouted, "No police anywhere set up uphill radar traps."

Seconds later we hit 130 on an empty road.

The wind ripped through our hair.

Her hand twisted the volume knob for Depeche Mode's PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE. "It's a stupid law."

Alia touched my arm.

She possessed a diplomat's gift of knowing when to say nothing.

"Thank you, officer."

The park ranger drove down the road.

"You still want to go swimming no matter what she said?"

I shrugged a 'yes'.

"The law is the law and as a guest of your country I am obliged to obey them."

"Drat."

We turned away from the forbidden pleasure of Lake Awosting's crystal-clear water.

"I hate this America. It's become the Land of No."

"It's the times. Not the country."

"More like both. Let's go back to New York." The City was the last bastion of the Free.

On the trip home the radio announced that the USA bailing out of the Racism Conference in South Africa in protest of a nearly unanimous condemnation of Israel for their occupation of Palestine.

"Another thing I hate about America."

"What?"

"Nothing." Anti-Zionist talk was as legal in this America as swimming after Labor Day.

I needed a drink.

Alia and I stopped at a bar in New Paltz.

Three beers later I was ready to resume our return to New York.

Alia was sober. She never drank liquor and the Porsche hit 140 on the Freeway.

I sat back and enjoyed the ride, because speed was a rare freedom in America and Alia could drive fast. All I had to do was watch the wind.