Poolside at the End of Shift

The pool at midnight belonged to the ghosts of the apartment complex. I'd been slipping out of my third-floor unit every night for a week, unable to sleep, unable to stop thinking about how many years I'd given to that law firm. Seven years of billing6-minute increments, of becoming the kind of person who'd forgotten how to feel anything at all. A zombie in a tailored suit.

The water was cold enough to make me gasp when I slid in, but I didn't mind. Floating on my back, staring up at the three-remaining stars visible through the city's light pollution, I tried to remember the last time I'd felt something real.

"You come here every night, don't you?"

The voice made me sink beneath the surface. I came up sputtering to find Sarah standing at the pool's edge, clutching a goldfish bowl to her chest like it contained something infinitely precious. She lived in 4B. We'd exchanged maybe ten words in the three years we'd been neighbors.

"Couldn't sleep," I said, treading water. She looked different in the moonlight—softer, somehow, without her corporate armor.

"Me either." She sat down at the edge, dangling her feet in the water. "My husband left yesterday. Just packed his things and walked out while I was at work. Said he couldn't watch me turn into a zombie anymore. Couldn't watch me die by inches."

The goldfish swam lazy circles in its bowl, oblivious to the wreckage of human lives around it.

"I'm sorry," I said inadequately.

"He was right, though." She looked at me, really looked at me, and something in her expression made me feel naked in a way the water never could. "I saw you at the office Christmas party last year. You looked exactly like I feel. Like something that used to be alive."

The words hung between us, terrible and true.

"This goldfish," she continued, watching it swim, "I bought it two months ago because I thought maybe if I could keep something alive, maybe it meant I wasn't too far gone. But I keep forgetting to feed it. I keep forgetting it exists. That's what happens when you're a zombie, isn't it? You forget how to be alive."

She poured the goldfish into the pool. It swam away instantly, vanishing into the dark water.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving it a chance," she said. "Either it dies, or it figures out how to live in something bigger than a bowl." She stood up, and for the first time, she looked awake. Truly awake. "I quit my job today. I don't know what comes next, but I'm done being dead."

She walked away without looking back, and I floated there in the dark, wondering what it would take to follow her. Wondering if there was anything left of me that could still swim.