Chlorine and Silence

Maya sat at the edge of the hotel pool, legs submerged in water that smelled of chemicals and forced relaxation. Her iphone lay face-up on the ceramic tile, screen dark for the past three hours. Somewhere in Los Angeles, David was probably awake. Probably not thinking about her at all.

She'd started taking the vitamin D supplements after Dr. Patel said her levels were practically non-existent. "You work inside too much," he'd told her, and David had laughed, said maybe she needed a better job, maybe she needed to be outside more. That was six months ago, before he stopped noticing whether she came home at all.

The papaya at the breakfast buffet had been strangely perfect. Sweet and yielding in a way nothing else in her life felt anymore. She'd eaten three pieces, standing over the little china plate while hotel guests rushed past her, early for meetings and conferences and lives that made sense.

Her hair was wet from an earlier swim, plastered against her neck in salt-crusted strands. She used to love when David wrapped it around his fingers when they kissed. Used to. That word again. Used to love, used to laugh, used to believe they were building something that would last.

The pool reflected the sky in distorted ripples — blue, white, the pale undersides of clouds. Maya imagined she could see herself in there, broken into pieces, each version floating separately from the others. The wife she was. The woman she was becoming. The one who didn't know how to be either anymore.

Her iphone buzzed once. Not David. A calendar reminder: "Dinner with the Levins — 7:30." A dinner she'd cancelled three days ago when she booked this room, this escape, this silent weekend by a pool that kept trying to tell her something about starting over, about how everything eventually dissolves into something new.

She slipped underwater and held her breath, listening to the muffled world below, where for a moment, even her own thoughts couldn't reach her.