Dead Things in the Water

The pool hadn't been cleaned in weeks. Green algae slicked the surface like an emerald bruise, and Maya watched a single leaf trace slow circles in the stagnant water. She should have been at work—some cable installation that couldn't wait—but she'd called in sick again. The zombie hours between 9 and 5 had become impossible to navigate.

Marcus found her there, vitamin bottle in hand. The orange plastic rattled as he shook two capsules into his palm. "You haven't taken these in three days."

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He stood behind her, not touching. The space between them had grown vast. "The cat's been crying at the door since dawn."

Sasha. The cat Marcus had brought home the week after his mother died, the one he'd sworn would bring life back into their house. Now the cat was just another thing neither of them could care for properly.

"I watched her last night," Maya said. "She caught something. A mouse, I think. She played with it for twenty minutes before she killed it. Just batting it around, letting it think it might escape."

Marcus swallowed the vitamins dry. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because that's us." Maya turned to face him. His eyes were bloodshot, the cable company uniform wrinkled at the collar. "We're the mouse, Marcus. Or maybe I'm the cat. I can't tell anymore."

He laughed, a short sharp sound. "So I'm the zombie?"

"We both are. Walking around like nothing's wrong. The pool's been rotting all summer and neither of us has done a thing about it."

Marcus stepped closer. For a moment, Maya thought he might touch her—brush her hair back, fix his thumb on that spot behind her ear. Instead, he pulled the crumpled work order from his pocket. "They're cutting the cable today. The whole account. Past due."

"Oh."

"I can fix it," he said. "One more overtime shift."

"Or we could let it go."

"The cable?"

"Everything." Maya looked at the pool, at the green water that no one would swim in this summer. "We could drain it. Start over."

Marcus studied his wife, really looked at her, for the first time in months. He saw the dark circles, the tremor in her hands, the way she held herself like something fragile. The zombie wasn't the one who'd died—it was the one who kept moving anyway.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. We'll drain the pool."

The cat appeared at the sliding glass door, watching them. Maya took the vitamins from his hand, dry and bitter on her tongue. Somewhere behind them, the cable guy's van pulled into the driveway, but neither of them turned to look.