Chlorine and Citrus

The pool at the Sundowner Motel didn't so much sparkle as it brooded—a still, unmoving oval of turquoise beneath the desert sky. Elena sat at its edge, legs submerged to the calves, watching the water distort her thighs into something foreign and elastic.

In her hand: a box of hair dye, shade "Tangerine Dream."

"Bold choice," said a voice behind her.

Elena turned. A man in a faded hotel uniform leaned against the palm tree, smoking a cigarette. His name was Carlos; she knew this from the check-in counter where he'd eyed her wedding-ring tan line with practiced sympathy.

"I'm forty-two, Carlos. I spent two decades being someone's sensible wife. Someone's mother. I dyed my hair 'honey brown' and kept my opinions to myself."

She set the box on the concrete. "Yesterday I signed papers. Today I buy a one-way ticket to somewhere else. And somewhere along the way, I realized I've never actually seen my own hair color. It's been dyed since I was sixteen."

Carlos exhaled smoke that disappeared into the already-hazy air. "So you're going orange."

"I'm going to find out what's underneath all that compromise."

He flicked the cigarette butt into a sand-filled bucket. "Pool's heated, if you want to swim. Nobody comes here this time of year anyway."

Elena stood up, her wet legs leaving dark prints on the concrete. She opened the dye box, reading the instructions like they were sacred text. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.

"You know what I realized?" she said, not turning around. "Orange is the color of emergency cones. Construction warnings. Things that say STOP, PAY ATTENTION."

She stepped toward the pool's ladder.

"Maybe it's time someone noticed me."

And then she was underwater, weightless for the first time in twenty years, the chlorine stinging her eyes as everything she'd been dissolved into something new.