Palm Fronds & Papaya Skins
Marcus stood on the balcony of his CancĂşn hotel room, nursing a papaya he'd ripped open with his bare hands. The juice dripped down his wrists, sticky and sweet, as he watched the cable repair crew work on the lines below. It had been three days since the resort's WiFi went down, three days of silence from the office back in Chicago.
"The market's still bullish," Elena had said at dinner their last night together, slicing through her steak with surgical precision. "You're being bearish about us for no reason."
She was right, of course. She always was. That was the problem—Elena moved through life with the certainty of a matador facing down a bull, while Marcus spent his days flinching at shadows.
His phone buzzed for the first time in days. A signal. One bar. Elena's name flashed across the screen.
Marcus wiped his sticky palms on his linen shirt. He could answer. He could let her explain why she'd been texting her junior analyst until 2 AM. Why her "strategy sessions" always ran late when Marcus was out of town.
The papaya flesh was soft against his tongue, overly ripe, verging on fermentation. Below, the cable repairman's harness strained as he stretched toward the connection point, suspended between safety and the concrete below.
Marcus had taken this trip to think. To decide whether to call off the wedding. Instead, he'd spent three days drinking at the pool bar and avoiding his own reflection in the mirror.
He pressed his thumb against the red icon.
"Marcus?" Elena's voice came through, static-ridden but clear. "I was worried. Why haven't you answered?"
Marcus looked at his hands—the stained skin, the half-eaten fruit, the trembling that wouldn't stop. He thought about the bull market, about riding highs that couldn't last, about the inevitable correction.
"I'm not coming back," he said.
"What?" The static hissed. "Marcus, don't be ridiculous. The wedding is in three weeks."
"Not for me." He hung up before she could respond, and dropped the phone into his papaya bowl.
The cable repairman secured his connection. The WiFi indicator flickered to life. Marcus turned away from the balcony, leaving the fruit to rot in the Mexican sun, and walked toward the packing he'd never started.