Chlorine and Regret

Margaret stood by the edge of the hotel pool, nursing her fourth vitamin cocktail of the evening—a neon concoction the bartender had promised would cure whatever existential malady had brought her to this sales conference in the first place. The water shimmered with that artificial blue that only exists in places where no one actually swims.

"You're going to eat that?" David asked, nodding at the wilted spinach salad that had been sitting on her table for three hours.

"I'm thinking about it."

"You always think about things. That's your problem."

This was the David who had slept with her junior account executive. The David who had defended himself with a PowerPoint presentation about workplace boundaries and professional growth. The David who was now married to someone else, someone who probably ate all her vegetables without overanalyzing the metaphorical implications.

A drunk junior exec—barely twenty-three, still convinced that corporate ladder-climbing meant something—tripped and knocked over the centerpiece bowl. A single goldfish flopped onto the patio tiles, its orange scales catching the pool lights. It gasped, tiny mouth opening and closing in what looked suspiciously like laughter.

"Someone should help it," David said, not moving.

"Someone always should."

Margaret thought about the email she'd received that morning: her mother's diagnosis, the oncologist's clinical voice, the way her father had asked if she was coming home for Christmas like he wasn't holding back tears. She thought about the promotion she'd turned down three years ago to stay in a department that no longer existed. She thought about the way David's palm had felt against her cheek the first time he'd kissed her, and how it had felt slapping her resignation across her desk two years later.

The goldfish stopped moving.

"I'm going to bed," Margaret said, abandoning the spinach, the vitamin water, the pool, and the man who had taught her that sometimes the most professional thing you can do is let something die on the patio tiles while everyone watches and does nothing at all.