Dinner at the End of Friendship

The spinach leaf caught between Marcus's incisors had taken on the quality of a third guest at the table. Sarah watched it dance as he spoke, a tiny green flag signaling the decay of their twenty-year friendship.

'Baseball,' Marcus said, gesturing with his wineglass. 'Remember how we used to sneak into games? College.'</n

Sarah nodded, watching the cable news crawl silently across the living room TV behind him. She'd invited him over because he'd been laid off—again—and because she'd promised his sister she'd check on him. But the third glass of Merlot had loosened his tongue, and now the real reason for his visit was tumbling out.

'I slept with Elena,' he said.

The spinach disappeared as Marcus swallowed. Sarah's stomach turned over. Elena—her business partner, her confidante, the woman who'd held her hair back when Sarah's mother died.

'It wasn't planned,' Marcus continued. 'We were working late, the cable went out, we started talking about old times...'

Old times. College. Baseball games. The three of them, tangled in each other's lives since they were twenty. Now Sarah was forty-two, her marriage was dissolving, and the two people she trusted most had apparently found comfort in each other's arms.

'When?' she heard herself ask.

'Months ago. It's been over for months now, but I needed you to know.'

Sarah thought about the spinach, how it had been there all along, visible and invisible. How long had they been lying to her? How many dinners had they shared, how many drinks, while this secret grew between them like something alive?

She stood up and began clearing plates. 'You should go.'

'Sarah—'

'The baseball game is on,' she said, though it wasn't. 'Go watch it somewhere else.'

He left without another word. Sarah washed the dishes alone, scrubbing away the remnants of their friendship, watching spinach specks swirl down the drain.