Breathing Underwater

The pool at the Tropicana was supposed to be paradise. Instead, Elena floated on her back, feeling like a zombie in chlorinated water, while Marcus sat at the edge typing furiously on his laptop. Their fifth anniversary trip. His tenth conference call of the day.

"You're missing it," she said, water filling her ears. "The whole point of being here."

"Just one more pyramid scheme to unwind," Marcus muttered, though she knew he meant the corporate reorganization—his company's latest restructuring shaped like an Egyptian tomb, with all the workers buried at the bottom.

That word. Pyramid. It haunted them. Two years ago, Elena's sister had lost forty thousand dollars to one. Last year, Marcus had been laid off from a company whose organizational chart was literally triangular. Now this.

A cat appeared on the concrete deck—scrawny, orange, with one ear that refused to stand up. It sat beside Marcus's sandals, watching them with what looked suspiciously like judgment.

"Company's gonna eliminate my department," Marcus said suddenly, his voice flat. "When we get back."

Elena treaded water. She'd known this was coming. Had felt it in the way he'd been waking up at 3 AM, staring at the ceiling like the dead.

"I feel like I've been half-alive for years," he continued. "Like something's been eating me from the inside out. Maybe that's what zombie means. Not the monsters. What happens to people before they die."

The cat made a sound like a rusty hinge and jumped onto Marcus's chair, curling up on his discarded shirt. He didn't push it away.

"My mother had a saying," Elena said, swimming to the edge. "'You can hold your breath underwater, but eventually you have to come up for air.' She said it about her marriage. About staying too long in things that drown you."

Marcus looked at her then—really looked at her—for the first time since they'd arrived. "What if I came up? What if we both did?"

The cat purred, a rumble against the humidity. Elena rested her chin on her arms at the pool's edge.

"Then we'd finally start living," she said.

He closed his laptop. The cat kneaded his shirt. Somewhere beyond the pool fence, real life waited with all its teeth. But here, in the artificial blue, they could finally decide to breathe.