Pillars of Salt

The fluorescent lights of the pharmacy hummed with that particular frequency that made Elena's teeth ache. She stood in the supplement aisle, staring at a bottle of vitamin D tablets — the kind her doctor had prescribed after her annual physical revealed deficiencies she'd rather not think about. At forty-two, she hadn't expected her body to start betraying her in such pedestrian ways.

"You look like you're solving for X in a equation that has no solution," a voice said beside her.

Elena turned to find Marcus, her oldest friend from college, looking irritatingly well-rested. They'd once been something more, back when they were twenty-three and the world felt expansive enough for both of them to chase dreams without colliding. Now he managed hedge funds and she managed chronic lower back pain and a career that had plateaued somewhere between promising and adequate.

"Just my daily reminder that mortality is slowly creeping up on me," Elena said, gesturing with the vitamin bottle. "What brings you to this particular circle of hell?"

"Same. Different letter of the alphabet." He held up a bottle of B-complex. "My doctor says I'm running on fumes and caffeine. Apparently stress isn't actually a food group."

They ended up at the pool where Marcus swam laps three times a week — something he'd suggested Elena try years ago, when her divorce was fresh and she was looking for ways to exhaust herself enough to sleep through the night. She'd never taken him up on it until last month, when her therapist had suggested finding something that felt like meditation but wasn't sitting still with her thoughts.

Now she found herself swimming beside him, the chlorine stinging her eyes, the rhythm of stroke-breathe-stroke hypnotic and strangely peaceful. There was something about being underwater — the muffled quiet, the weightlessness, the simple imperative to keep moving or sink — that made everything else recede.

"You know," Marcus said afterward, as they sat on the pool deck with towels wrapped around them like lost children, "we spent so much time trying to be extraordinary. I thought I'd change the world. You were going to write novels that mattered."

Elena looked at her wrinkled fingers, the way her wedding ring tan line had finally faded. "And instead we take vitamins and go swimming and try not to think about how we're just ordinary people with ordinary bodies that need maintenance."

"Maybe that's not failure," Marcus said quietly. "Maybe ordinary is harder than we thought."

Elena watched the water ripple in the pool, catching fragments of light. "You say that like it's a comfort."

"I say that like it's the only thing that's ever been true." He stood up, offered her a hand. "Same time next week?"

She took it. "See you then."

Later, swallowing her vitamin D with a glass of water, Elena thought maybe Marcus was right. Maybe growing old was just learning to make friends with the things you used to resist. Maybe that was its own kind of extraordinary.