Blue Hour at the Edge

The pool was still, a sheet of black glass reflecting nothing but the security light's amber glow. Elena sat on the concrete edge, legs dangling in the water, dress hiked up to her thighs. The water was colder than she expected — a shock against skin that had spent the last three hours in the overheated ballroom, smiling at people whose names she'd already forgotten.

Behind her, the hotel's back door clicked open. She didn't turn.

"Your husband's looking for you," Mark said.

"Let him look."

Mark sat beside her, not too close. His tie was already undone, collar unbuttoned. He'd been her husband's business partner for seven years, her friend for four, her something else for six months.

"You've got spinach in your teeth," he said.

She laughed, a short sharp sound. "From the appetizers. The ones David kept shoving at me whenever I tried to talk about anything real."

"He means well."

"Does he?" She swirled her feet through the water, creating ripples that distorted the amber reflection. "Or does he just mean for me to mean well? To be the wife who smiles and eats whatever's put in front of her and never asks if it's actually nourishing?"

Mark was quiet for a long moment. The pool's pump hummed somewhere in the distance.

"I put in my resignation today," he said.

She turned then. The security light caught the lines around his eyes, the gray at his temples that hadn't been there when they'd met. "What?"

"The firm. David. All of it. I'm moving to Portland next month. My sister's sick. She needs help with the restaurant."

"You're leaving."

"I've been leaving for a while, Elena. Just hadn't told anyone yet."

The water lapped against the pool's edge, a gentle, indifferent rhythm. She thought of all the afternoons they'd spent pretending this wasn't happening, all the moments that had felt like the beginning of something when really they'd been the end of everything else.

"The spinach," she said suddenly. "It was in that salad from our first lunch together, remember? The place downtown with the terrible acoustics?"

"I remember," Mark said. "You had green in your teeth through the whole meeting. I didn't say anything."

"Why?"

"Because," he said, standing up, "I wanted something to remember you by."

He walked back toward the hotel without looking back. Elena stayed by the pool, watching her reflection distort and reform in the dark water, waiting until she could no longer see the spinach between her teeth.