Chlorine and Forgetfulness

The hotel pool shimmered with that artificial blue that only exists in places people go to forget who they are. I sat on the lounge chair, nursing a drink that was mostly ice, watching the ripples expand and contract like the breathing of something sleeping.

"You look like a man who's just realized he's been taking the wrong vitamin his whole life."

I looked up. A woman—maybe thirty-five, with the kind of tired eyes that suggested she'd seen enough to find humor in it—stood beside me holding two beers. She gestured to the empty chair beside mine.

"Mind if I join? This singles mixer is exhausting."

"I'm not single," I said.

"Neither am I. That's why we're over here. Married people at company retreats are like indentured servants at a plantation."

She sat anyway. Her name was Elena. She worked in accounting. She had a daughter who played softball, which somehow led to us talking about baseball—how our fathers had lived and died with the statistics of men we'd never meet, how we'd both tried to love it for them, how we'd both failed.

"My husband thinks sports are primitive," she said, peeling the label from her beer bottle. "He's a surgeon. He says the body is just a machine that breaks down. He treats me like I'm malfunctioning when I cry."

"My wife thinks sadness is a character flaw," I admitted. "She schedules it on my calendar. Tuesday: depression, 7-8 PM."

Elena laughed, and something in my chest shifted. The sun was setting behind the palm trees that lined the property, their fronds silhouetted against a sky the color of a fresh bruise.

"What would you do," she asked, "if you could just... walk away?"

"I'd buy a house with a pool," I said. "Not a nice one. One of those above-ground things that kids have. And I'd float in it every morning until my skin wrinkled."

"Baseball," she said. "I'd go to games. Minor league. The players are hungry there. They still remember why they started."

Our hands were close on the small table between our chairs. Not touching. But close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her skin.

"Take your vitamin," she whispered.

"What?"

"Whatever you need. Whatever you're not getting. Take it."

The pool lights flickered on, casting underwater shadows that moved like ghosts across the bottom. I thought about my wife in our room, probably asleep with her phone on her chest. I thought about all the small ways we'd stopped looking at each other.

Elena's pinky finger brushed against mine.

"I forgot my sunscreen," she said.

"I have some."

"No," she said, standing up. "You don't."

She walked toward the hotel, and I watched her go. I stayed by the pool until the water went dark, until the only movement was my own reflection staring back at me, and even that seemed like someone I used to know.