Dead Man's Float

The corporate retreat had been Elena's idea — a desperate bid to resuscitate their marriage before it turned into one of those arrangements where two people occupy the same house like ghosts haunting separate rooms. Now, at 2 AM, she found herself at the hotel pool, watching her husband Mark tread water in the deep end.

He'd been down there for twenty minutes, moving with that slow, rhythmless motion she'd noticed lately — like a body that had forgotten its own purpose. In the year since his promotion, Mark had become something resembling a zombie: hollow-eyed, answering questions with a ten-second delay, smiling at things that weren't funny. The money was better than ever. The man was gone.

Elena sat on the edge with her feet in the water, clutching a glass of orange juice she'd pilfered from the hospitality suite. The juice had separated, pulp settling at the bottom like sediment in a drying river. She thought about how she'd stopped asking how his day was three months ago, and how he hadn't noticed.

"You coming in?" Mark asked, his voice echoing off the tiles. He hadn't looked up.

"Just watching."

"It's peaceful down here. Like being dead but without the commitment."

She'd never heard him make a joke before. Not one that landed, anyway.

"Mark." She said it like a test. "When did you start running away?"

"I'm not running away. I'm — " He stopped, water lapping against his shoulders. The hotel's neon sign threw orange light across the pool's surface, making it look like something toxic. "I'm trying to remember what I'm supposed to be swimming toward."

He'd begun swimming laps months ago — running, actually, until his knees gave out. Then the pool at their gym. Then the bathtub, three times a night, sometimes falling asleep there. She'd found him once, head against the porcelain, skin shriveled.

Elena slid into the water. It was cold enough to make her breath catch. She swam to him, grabbing his hand underwater. His skin was soft from too much exposure, wrinkled like paper.

"You're supposed to be swimming toward me, you idiot."

For the first time in a year, Mark really looked at her. Something behind his eyes seemed to wake up, small and frightened but alive.

"I forgot," he said. "I'm sorry. I forgot."

They stayed like that until dawn, treading water together, two bodies refusing to drown while the sky turned the color of a healing bruise.