Concrete Underwater

Elena adjusted the brim of her **hat** against the merciless Cabo sun, though the real heat came from three feet away. Marcus lounged on the chaise beside her, that careful nonchalance he'd mastered during fourteen years of corporate crisis management now turned on their marriage.

The resort **pool** shimmered with that unreal blue you only see in expensive postcards, the kind of place where you go to forget things, or pretend to. She watched a lone **goldfish**— ridiculous, out of place, probably some guest's abandoned pet—circle lethargically near the drain, caught in the filter's lazy current.

"You haven't touched your drink," Marcus said. He'd ordered her a mimos **orange** juice and champagne, as if alcohol and citrus could mend this.

"I'm not thirsty." She flexed her hand, studying her **palm** as if the lines there might rewrite themselves, offer some alternative future. Last night's confession still hung in the air between them: one night, Portland, a colleague whose name she already couldn't remember. He'd been so careful with his qualifiers—meaningless, alcohol, never happen again—as if the details mattered.

"Elena." His voice cracked, the CEO veneer finally slipping.

The goldfish surfaced, gulping air. She remembered watching Marcus swim laps in this same pool yesterday morning, cutting through the water with that relentless efficiency he brought to everything, including whatever this was—indiscretion? mistake? midpoint?

"What do you want me to say?" she asked.

"I don't know. Something. Anything."

The hat cast a shadow across her face. She thought of all the marriages she'd seen survive worse, and all the ones that hadn't, and how that statistic offered no comfort whatsoever. The goldfish disappeared beneath the surface again.

"I'm going inside," she said, standing up. "Don't follow me."

He didn't. She left him there with the orange juice warming in the heat and the goldfish circling its invisible prison, learning somehow to live in water it couldn't breathe.