Liquid Assets

The Panama hat lay tilted at an impossible angle, drowning in the deep end of the infinity pool. Marco watched it sink slowly, a straw ghost surrendering to chlorine, while his iPhone buzzed against his thigh with another goddamn email from corporate.

"You're doing it again," Elena said from the chaise beside him, not looking up from her phone. "That face. Like you're solving the world's problems one panic attack at a time."

"Bullshit presentation at three," Marco said, toeing off his loafers. "Regional VP wants to know why the Austin office is bleeding talent. Spoiler: it's because he's a sociopath who schedules 8 AM meetings on Saturdays."

The Austin office. Where Elena worked. Where Marco had first met her at the holiday party three years ago, drunk on spiked eggnog and the thrill of their affair's impossibility. Now they were married, and the thrill had been replaced by this: poolside at a company retreat, both of them pretending their careers weren't slowly killing something vital.

Elena's phone pinged. She laughed softly, the sound like ice in glass.

"What?"

"Greg from accounting just called Russell a 'bull in a china shop' in the group chat. To his face. Using that exact phrase. Greg has no imagination whatsoever." She finally looked at him. "You think he knows?"

Marco's chest tightened. They'd been so careful. Separate hotel rooms. Lingering touches only in elevators. Those three nights in Austin last month when the merger negotiations ran long and Elena's husband was out of town.

"Knows what?"

"That you'd rather drown with that hat than go back inside." She sat up, serious now. "Marco. The Austin transfer. You've been avoiding it since January."

His phone buzzed again. The vice president again. Something about leveraging synergies and bullish market projections and other words that meant nothing when you were staring at the wrong woman in a swimsuit by a pool that stretched endlessly toward nothing.

"I'm not avoiding it," he said. "I'm thinking about what comes after."

"There is no after," she said. "There's only the next email, the next flight, the next merger. And then we die."

Marco watched the hat finally disappear beneath the turquoise surface. In another lifetime, he would have jumped in after it. In this one, he picked up his iPhone and opened the email.

"I'll take the transfer," he said, not looking at her. "Austin needs fixing. Someone has to do it."