Electric Summer

The baseball game blared from the television behind the bar—another season slipping away while Marcus stared into his whiskey. He was forty-three, and the last thing he expected to find himself doing on a Tuesday night was watching his ex-wife play padel with her new boyfriend through the fence of the country club he could no longer afford.

'You're going to burn a hole in that glass,' said Elena, sliding onto the stool beside him. She was twenty-six, with the kind of beauty that made men ruin their lives, and she knew it.

Marcus shrugged. 'Just thinking about how I used to be on the other side of that fence.' He'd been a member for seven years. Sarah had left him six months ago, and somehow the club fees had become the first thing to go.

'Sarah looks happy,' Elena observed. Marcus's ex-wife laughed at something the boyfriend said—some investment banker named Mark who probably said things like 'synergy' without irony.

'She does,' Marcus said. 'Maybe that's the worst part.' Outside, lightning forked across the sky, sudden and violent, illuminating the padel court for half a second. In that flash, Marcus saw Sarah's face clearly, and it was the same face that had watched him destroy their marriage one glass of scotch at a time.

The bartender set down another drink. Marcus had lost count.

'You know what they say about lightning,' Elena said, her voice dropping. 'It never strikes the same place twice.' Her hand brushed his thigh.

Marcus looked at her—really looked at her. She was wearing fox fur around her neck, incongruous for June, maybe vintage, maybe real. He couldn't tell anymore. 'Maybe that's the problem,' he said. 'Some places only get struck once. Then you're just waiting for something that's never coming back.'

The country club pool glimmered beyond the courts, blue and perfect and empty. He and Sarah had conceived their daughter there, late one night after a member's gala, both of them drunk and foolish and desperately in love. Now his daughter was with her grandmother, and Sarah was with Mark, and Marcus was here.

Elena leaned closer. 'I could help you forget.' The baseball game ended on the screen. Someone had won. Someone had lost. The scoreboard would reset tomorrow, and they'd do it all again.

Marcus finished his drink. 'Some things,' he said, 'aren't meant to be forgotten.' He left money on the bar and walked out into the storm.