Electrical Current

The lightning struck just as Elena walked into the apartment, a jagged tear through the charcoal sky that illuminated her husband's face in the kitchen. He was chopping an orange, the knife's silver flash matching the storm outside.

'They fired David,' Marcus said, not looking up. Citrus spray misted his hands. 'Twenty years at the firm and they escorted him out like a criminal.'

Elena set her bag down, already exhausted. The corporate bullpen had been brutal lately — everyone waiting for the axe to fall, watching colleagues get culled like cattle in a slaughterhouse. Marcus had been called worse than a bull by his competitors; stubborn, charging forward, refusing to pivot when the market turned. Elena used to admire that about him. Now she just wondered if it was worth the ulcer.

She joined him at the counter, took a wedge of orange he offered. The juice was sharp on her tongue, almost stinging. 'Did you talk to Linda?'

'About what?' His deflection was practiced.

'About us. About the fact that we haven't had a real conversation in three months.'

The kitchen filled with water sounds — the tap running, rain drumming against the window, the refrigerator humming its indifferent song. Elena felt like she was drowning slowly, comfortably, in the ordinary tragedy of a marriage that had forgotten how to be anything else.

Another flash of lightning split the sky. The kitchen went bright, sudden as a photograph, and for one crystallized moment she saw everything: the lines around Marcus's eyes, the way his shoulders hunched forward, the half-eaten orange between them like some unspoken thing.

'Tomorrow,' he said, finally. 'I'll talk to her tomorrow.'

Elena believed him. That was the problem.