Evening at the Edge

Mara sat by the apartment complex pool, her legs dangling in water that had turned the color of a bruised peach. The orange sunset bled across the sky like something wounded. At 42, she'd expected something different than this – this feeling of moving through her days like a zombie, animated only by obligation and caffeine.

Her phone buzzed on the chaise lounge. Mark. Again. The frayed charging cable lay beside it like a dead snake, its wires exposed where she'd bent it one too many times. Three months of marriage, twelve arguments about whose turn it was to call the plumber, and now he wanted to talk. She'd stopped answering two days ago.

She ran wet fingers through her hair – blonde going mousy at the roots, another thing she hadn't bothered with lately. In the reflection of the dark pool water, she looked like a stranger. When had her face gotten so tired? When had the space between her eyebrows etched that permanent vertical line?

A couple splashed in the shallow end, drunk on something cheap and laughter that felt sharp against the evening's melancholy. They were young, probably not yet thirty, still believing that love was something you found rather than something you built – or failed to build, in her case.

The pool lights flickered on automatically, turning the water turquoise and artificial. It was all fake when you thought about it – the chlorinated blue water, the palm trees that weren't native to this climate, the marriages people performed like scripts they'd never rehearsed.

Mara stood up, water dripping from her legs onto the concrete. She left the phone there, screen lighting up with another call she wouldn't answer. Tomorrow she'd figure out where to go. Tomorrow she'd call her mother. Tomorrow she'd make an appointment with a therapist. Tonight, she would just walk into the apartment she shared with a man she'd stopped loving, pack a bag, and drive until the orange sunrise found her somewhere new.

The zombie, she decided, was done staying dead.