High Water

Marcus stood on the edge of the bathtub, fully clothed, watching the water rise around his ankles. The bathroom mirror was steamed up, blurring his reflection into something ghost-like, unrecognizable. A hat—his grandfather's fedora, the one he'd worn to the funeral—rested on the closed toilet lid like a sleeping animal.

He'd become a zombie, really. Moving through his marriage to Elena on autopilot, nodding at the right times, asking about her day while his mind remained elsewhere. Somewhere distant and safe.

"Marcus?" Her voice from the hallway. "There's water dripping through the kitchen ceiling."

"I know," he said, though he didn't know how he knew. Maybe he'd felt it happening, the same way he felt everything lately—distantly, as if it were occurring to someone else.

Their cat, Clementine, appeared in the doorway, meowing insistently. She'd been Elena's idea, something to nurture together. Now the cat mostly watched him with judging amber eyes.

Elena stepped into the bathroom, her gaze taking everything in: the rising water, the hat, Marcus standing fully dressed in the tub. She didn't look surprised anymore. That was the problem with becoming predictable—you exhausted people's capacity for shock.

"The cable guy is coming Thursday," she said instead of asking what he was doing. "Maybe you could mention the leak."

"Thursday."

"Unless you'd rather talk now."

The water reached his calves. It was uncomfortably warm, like the air between them had become—stagnant, recycled.

"Remember when we drove to the coast that first year?" Marcus asked suddenly. "We stood in the ocean fully clothed because we'd forgotten to pack swimsuits. You said it was the most alive you'd ever felt."

Elena's expression softened, then hardened again. "I was twenty-three, Marcus. I hadn't been properly disappointed yet."

She turned and left him there. Clementine followed, her tail twitching with what looked like satisfaction.

Marcus watched the water continue to rise, thinking about how everyone carried something that was slowly drowning them. The trick was finding someone willing to hold your head above the surface, even after they'd stopped breathing themselves.