Palm Shadows at Dusk

Marcus stood by the pool's edge, nursing his third drink and feeling the weight of forty-three pressing down on him like the humidity itself. The corporate retreat was in full swing — laughter, splashing, the desperate energy of people pretending to enjoy themselves.

"You've got spinach in your teeth," Elena said, appearing beside him. She was the new senior director, brilliant and sharp and currently holding a cocktail umbrella like a weapon.

He licked his teeth self-consciously. "How long?"

"Since the appetizers. I thought you'd want to know before the big speech."

Marcus groaned. "The vitamin presentation. Right."

He'd spent three weeks preparing slides about workplace wellness, about the importance of vitamin D and mental health breaks, while secretly popping Xanax like they were, well, vitamins. The irony wasn't lost on him.

"Your wife's not here?" Elena asked, her tone carefully neutral.

"Separated. Two months now."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. She left her favorite sun hat behind when she moved out. I keep finding it in closets, like she's haunting me with accessories."

Elena's palm brushed against his as she reached for the bowl of nuts between them. The contact was accidental, electric, dangerous in that way only workplace proximity could be. They were both married to their careers anyway, married to the mortgage payments and the deferred life plans.

"Marcus," she said, "you ever feel like you're drowning in inches of water?"

He looked at the pool, at his colleagues floating blissfully ignorant in the chemically-treated blue. "Every day."

"Then let's skip the speech," she said, setting her drink down. "Let's rent a car, drive to the coast, pretend we're the kind of people who make impulsive decisions."

Marcus looked at her really looked at her — and saw the same exhausted hunger he felt reflected back. The spinach in his teeth didn't matter anymore. Neither did the vitamins or the presentation or the goddamn hat his wife had abandoned.

"I have to return by Monday," he said.

"Tuesday," she countered. "I can't do Monday."

And somewhere in the space between those two days, in the palm-shadowed dusk by a hotel pool, Marcus finally decided to start swimming.