Dead Man's Laps

The pool at 5 AM was the only place Arthur didn't feel like a zombie. He'd been moving through his days on autopilot since the divorce—sleepwalking through meetings, nodding at things he didn't hear, signing documents he didn't read. But here, in the water, everything was sharp. The cold against his skin. The rhythm of his breath. The silence that pressed against his ears like a weighted blanket.

Forty-two years old and he'd somehow become the person his younger self would have pitied. That bull of a boss at the firm—Hendricks—had been riding him for months, breathing down his neck about the Baker account, making snide comments about Arthur's "focus" during team meetings. Hendricks, whose idea of leadership was intimidation and whose second wife had left him last year, taking half his assets and his dignity. Arthur should have felt something other than exhausted when he'd heard the news. He should have felt something.

He turned at the wall, his feet finding the rough concrete of the pool floor. Sixty laps. His doctor had suggested it—said his blood pressure was too high, that he needed an outlet. She'd looked at him with those concerned eyes, the ones that said 'midlife crisis' without saying it out loud.

Arthur pushed off the wall. His body remembered what his mind tried to forget: how to keep moving when your lungs burned, when your muscles screamed, when you wanted nothing more than to let yourself sink.

The divorce papers had cited irreconcilable differences. That was the polite way to say that Sarah had woken up one morning and realized she didn't love him anymore, hadn't for years. That she'd been swimming through their marriage too, going through the motions, waiting for something to change. Arthur had been too zombie to notice.

He finished lap sixty-eight and hung onto the edge, breathing hard. The sun was coming up through the skylights, painting the water gold. For a moment, he felt something almost like hope. Maybe tomorrow he'd tell Hendricks to shove his Baker account. Maybe he'd finally call his mother, who'd left three messages last week. Maybe he'd start actually living instead of just existing.

Arthur pulled himself out of the water. His heart was beating. His lungs were working. He was still here, still swimming, still alive. That would have to be enough for now.