Pool Sharks and Salad Days

The hotel pool glittered like a spilled diamond necklace under the desert sun, but David sat in the shadowed corner of the courtyard, nursing a gin and tonic that had gone watery twenty minutes ago. His division had been sold in a hostile takeover three months ago, and now he was attending the "synergy conference"—corporate-speak for the survivors gathering to learn which of them would be axed next.

He watched the new acquisitions cannonball into the pool, their laughter splashing against the courtyard walls like accusations. David had spent twenty years climbing to the VP suite, skipping his daughter's baseball games and missing anniversary dinners. Now, at forty-seven, he'd been replaced by an algorithm and a twenty-eight-year-old who called everyone "fam."

A woman sat beside him, her swimsuit cover-up still damp. "You're not swimming?" she asked, gesturing toward the pool with her martini. Her wedding ring tan line was still visible—divorced recent enough to remember, long enough to have stopped caring.

"I forgot my suit," David lied. Actually, he hadn't worn one since his daughter stopped speaking to him three years ago. She'd been the catcher in her championship game, the one he'd missed for a board meeting about quarterly projections that nobody remembered now.

The woman nodded, understanding in her eyes. She ordered the spinach artichoke dip from the waiter, who had the kind of acne that reminded David of his son at that age. His son was twenty-two now, probably somewhere else, doing something David didn't know about. The thought hit him like a line drive to the chest—how little he knew about the people he'd supposedly worked his whole life to provide for.

"I used to love baseball," she said unexpectedly, staring at the dip's congealing surface. "My dad took me to games. Sunday afternoons, beer and hot dogs, the whole cliché." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "He died last year. pancreatic cancer. By the end, he couldn't even keep water down."

David's glass sweated onto the table, pooling in condensation rings. He thought about his own father, dead six years now, and how David had missed the funeral because of a client emergency. The client had fired them six months later anyway.

"I should call my daughter," he said aloud, the words foreign in his mouth.

"Probably," she agreed. "Before the only water you're swimming in becomes the kind they put you in."

She left her half-eaten spinach dip on the table. David stayed in the courtyard until the sun set, until the pool lights flickered on, making the water look like a portal to somewhere else—some other life he might have lived if he'd made different choices. Finally, he pulled out his phone, scrolled past three years of silence, and typed: "Thinking of you. Love, Dad."