Dead of Summer

The pool sat stagnant in the motel courtyard, its surface still and opaque as milk. Sarah sat on the edge, her legs trailing in water that felt too warm, too intimate, like bathwater someone had just left.

Inside room 217, the television droned — a baseball game, ninth inning, Braves down by three. Mark had been watching for three hours. The commentators' voices were familiar company to him, more reliable than Sarah's silence lately.

A stray cat slunk around the corner of the building, its orange coat matted with something dark. It watched her with yellow eyes that seemed to know things. Sarah tossed a piece of her stale bagel; the cat caught it mid-air without breaking eye contact.

"You feeding that thing again?" Mark's voice from the doorway. He held a beer can, condensation dripping onto his bare foot. "Baseball's almost over. You coming in?"

"In a minute."

He shrugged and disappeared inside. The screen door slapped shut behind him.

That was them now: doorways, screen doors, moments of near-contact that ended with someone turning away. They'd come to this motel for their anniversary — seven years — trying to remember why they'd started. So far, mostly silence and sports.

The cat finished eating and approached the pool's edge, lapping water cautiously. Sarah watched its reflection distort in the surface, thinking how easy it would be to slip under, let the water take the weight off her chest. Not to die. Just to float. To not have to choose anything for a while.

Then she saw it — a fox at the tree line, impossibly still, watching them both. Its coat burned rust-red against the dying light. For a long moment, the three of them formed a strange tableau: Sarah at the pool's edge, the cat drinking, the fox witnessing.

What do you know? she wanted to ask it. The fox's eyes were dark, intelligent, utterly indifferent. Then it turned and vanished into the pines, ghost-quiet.

Inside, the crowd roared. Someone must have hit a home run.

Sarah pulled her legs from the water. They felt heavy, weighted with something she couldn't name. She stood, dripping, and walked toward room 217, where Mark was waiting, where the television glowed blue in the dusk, where everything looked the same but nothing really was anymore.

The cat watched her go. Behind her, the pool's surface settled into stillness, reflecting only the first stars of an indifferent sky.