Drowning in Shallow Water

The bull sat in the corner office, snorting opinions about quarterly projections. Marco called him 'El Toro' behind his back — a man who charged through meetings without regard for collateral damage. At forty-two, Marco had learned that surviving corporate warfare meant learning when to dodge and when to let the beast exhaust itself against the arena walls.

Friday evenings found him at the padel club, the thwack of the ball against glass walls drowning out the week's accumulated indignities. Elena, his partner on the court and in what passed for life these days, moved with an elegance that made his own motions feel clumsy and rehearsed.

"You're playing like you're still in the office," she said during a water break, wiping sweat from her forehead. "What did Henderson do now?"

Marco laughed, bitter and short. "Same old bull. Demanded I redo the entire presentation because the blue wasn't 'trustworthy' enough. Meanwhile, he's got me running his betting pool for March Madness like I'm his personal assistant."

"You know what you need?" Elena said, already knowing his answer. "Swimming."

The pool at her apartment complex was always empty at midnight. They'd slip through the gate like teenagers, shedding work clothes and accumulated grievances along with the rest. There was something about the water — the way it swallowed sound and demanded presence — that made it impossible to maintain the armor he wore all day.

Floating on his back, looking up at the sky that seemed impossibly distant, Marco realized he'd been treading water for years. The bull would still be in the corner office Monday morning. The presentations would still be wrong. But here, suspended between chlorine and stars, he could pretend there was still time to choose a different direction.

"We should just leave," Elena said, reading his mind as she tread water beside him. "Start something. Anything."

"We say that every week," Marco replied, watching steam rise from their wet skin into the cooling night air.

"Someday," she said, "we'll stop saying it and start doing it."

"Someday," he echoed, but they both knew that was just another word for never. The water held them both, buoyant and motionless, as the temperature dropped and the hours slipped away toward morning.