Drowning in Shallow Water

The corporate retreat was her idea. Of course it was. Lisa from HR, whose smile never reached her eyes, who organized team-building exercises like she was conducting experiments on rats. We stood around the hotel **pool** in tropical shirts that cost too much, holding margaritas that melted too fast, pretending this wasn't a timeout chamber for adults who'd stopped dreaming.

I'd been a **zombie** for three years. That's what happens when you specialize in corporate restructuring — you become the thing you dismantle. My palms sweated constantly. I'd taken to visiting a **palm** reader in a strip mall between the office and my apartment. She was seventy if she was a day, with fingers like dried twigs and eyes that had seen everything and forgotten nothing.

"You have a long life line," she'd said last Tuesday, tracing the crease in my hand. "But you're not living it."

The **water** in the pool looked too blue, like something artificial. Marcus from accounting cannonballed in, sending up a splash that caught Lisa's expensive silk blouse. She didn't flinch. That was the thing about Lisa — you couldn't break her composure any more than you could break a diamond with a hammer.

"Steve!" someone called. "Get in here!"

I waded in. The water was surprisingly cold against my skin, a shock that woke something dormant. I floated on my back, staring up at the palm fronds that swayed against a sky too perfect to be real, and felt suddenly, violently alive.

Marcus swam over. "Lisa is talking about another restructuring. They're calling it Project Bull." He snorted. "Because they want to **bull**doze through the opposition."

I sank beneath the surface, held my breath as water filled my ears, muffled the laughter and the clinking glasses. Down here, in the silence, I understood something: the palm reader was right. I wasn't living. I was just existing between restructurings, waiting for someone else to decide my fate.

I broke the surface, gasping.

"You okay?" Marcus asked.

"Never better," I said, and I meant it. I climbed out of the pool, dripping and alive, and walked toward Lisa, who was already discussing tomorrow's agenda with that predatory smile of hers.

"Lisa," I said, water streaming from my hair. "I need to talk to you about Project Bull."

Her smile faltered. Just for a second. But it was enough.