Dead Things in the Deep End

The pool at the Oakwood Apartments had that peculiar blue glow you only see at 2 AM — the color of insomnia, of television screens left on too long. Mara sat on the edge, legs dangling in the chlorine, watching her husband smoke his third cigarette of the hour.

"You look like a zombie," she said, not unkindly. It was just an observation. They both did. Three years of consulting gigs had hollowed them out, turned them into creatures who survived on caffeine and resentment.

Elias snorted, smoke curling from his nose. "Funny. That's exactly what my client called me today when I billed him for hours I spent watching him argue with his ex-wife about who got the vine-ripened tomatoes."

"Did you tell him that's not your problem?"

"I told him that's literally my problem. That's what he pays me for. To be a professional witness to his misery."

They sat in silence for a while. The pool's surface reflected their distorted shapes — two people they used to be, twisted by water and bad lighting. Somewhere in the distance, a cable snapped with a sound like a whip crack, probably another utility line sagging in the heat.

"I had spinach in my teeth during my presentation today," Mara said suddenly. "For twenty minutes. Nobody told me."

Elias looked at her. Really looked at her, for the first time in what might have been months. "Was it bad?"

"It was devastating. I'm presenting Q3 projections to senior leadership with bits of green salad stuck to my incisor like a mossy growth. I'm essentially a child playing dress-up, except the child has better presentation skills."

"You're the smartest person in that room."

"That's not saying much."

"No," Elias said, stubbing out his cigarette. "It really isn't."

He slid into the pool, clothes and all. The water rose around him like an embrace he hadn't felt in years. He treaded water there, watching her, waiting for her to decide if she would join him or leave him there, treading water in the deep end until his legs gave out.

Mara stood up. She didn't take off her dress. She didn't check the time. She just stepped off the edge and let herself sink into the blue, into the quiet, into whatever came next. They were still dead inside, but at least they were sinking together.