Empty Pools

The cat belonged to her. That was the agreement—Margot kept the apartment, and I kept Mr. Darcy, a judgmental tabby who now regarded me from across the empty swimming pool of my newly rented backyard. The pool hadn't held water in years. It held only memories and dry leaves and the echo of what I thought my life would look like at thirty-eight.

My iPhone lit up again. Margot. Third time tonight. I watched the screen flicker and dim, watched her name fade back into the black glass like a drowning thought. We'd been together seven years. The sheer magnitude of that arithmetic had crushed us both—seven years of compromises accumulated like silt at the bottom of something that used to run clear.

"She misses you," said Elena, appearing in the back door with two whiskey glasses. She was my landlord, thirty-two, and I'd known her exactly five days. "That's what the phone means, when it keeps ringing."

"It means she doesn't know what she wants," I said, taking the glass. "Same as always."

Elena looked out at the dry pool where Mr. Darcy was now hunting invisible things among the cracked tiles. "My brother used to say there's nothing more dangerous than a man who won't decide. He called it taking the bull by the horns, but really he just hated indecision. Died before he could practice what he preached."

"Sorry."

"He was forty-six. I keep thinking: at what point do you stop being the person you're becoming and start being the person you are?" She gestured at the pool with her glass. "That thing's been empty three years. I keep saying I'll fill it or tear it out. But here we are."

Mr. Darcy abandoned his hunt and padded toward us, purring like a small motor of forgiveness. I picked him up, his ribs pressed against my palms. He didn't care about the mortgage, or the years, or what happened next.

"I could help you fill it," I heard myself say. "The pool, I mean. I know a guy."

Elena smiled, something complicated in it—hope and hesitation and the recognition that some beginnings arrive disguised as endings. The iPhone lit up once more in my pocket, and I let it ring.