Chlorine and Silences

The pool at the Renaissance was supposed to be Mara's sanctuary. Instead, she floated on her back, chlorine stinging her eyes, watching palm fronds sway against a sky too blue to be honest. David had texted an hour ago: *Can't make it. Emergency merger.* The merger had been an emergency for six months.

She swam to the edge, where a woman in her twenties was laughing with a man who looked remarkably like David's business partner. The woman had something green stuck in her teeth—spinach, Mara realized, from the hotel restaurant's overpriced brunch. It was horrible, really, that she noticed. That she cared about strangers' dental hygiene while her own marriage dissolved across three time zones.

Her phone buzzed again. Not David. Her mother: *Your sister's pregnant. Again.* Mara pressed the phone face down on the concrete. The sun was beginning to set, painting everything orange and gold—the colors of endings, of hotels at twilight when the day guests left and the night ones arrived with their shiny expectations and temporary desires.

A waiter appeared. "Another drink, ma'am?" He was twenty, maybe. His name tag said Carlos. He had acne and hopeful eyes.

"Why not," she said. "Something with orange juice. Something that doesn't taste like regret."

He hesitated, then smiled. "I can make you a sunrise. My own recipe."

"Perfect," she said, and meant it.

She thought of David, probably on a conference call, spinning tragedies into opportunities. She thought of the spinach in that woman's teeth, how no one had told her. She thought of her sister, building a family Mara couldn't seem to start.

Carlos returned with a drink the color of a Florida sunset. She took it, clinked her glass against nothing in particular, and watched the first star appear above the palm trees. Tomorrow she'd call a lawyer. Tonight, she had this drink, this water, this terrible, beautiful orange light fading into something that looked almost like hope.