Poolside at the End of the World

Marcus lay by the hotel pool in Las Vegas, the desert sun blinding despite his sunglasses. The water shimmered like crushed diamonds, inviting and distant. His iPhone lay face down on the concrete, its black mirror reflecting nothing. It had been buzzing for twenty minutes—emails from New York, WhatsApp from Sarah, something about the quarterly review.

"Bull market's got another year in it, easy." The man beside him—sales director from Chicago, Marcus thought—gestured with his whiskey. "You just gotta know when to ride the wave."

Marcus nodded, tasting the lie on his tongue. The portfolio was overexposed, the risk models garbage, and everyone in the chain knew it. They'd all decided collectively to pretend otherwise. That was the job. That was always the job.

His phone lit up again. Sarah's name. She'd been texting all morning, asking when he'd be home, if he'd remembered to call his mother. He hadn't.

"You gonna get that?" the salesman asked.

"No."

"Good man. Work stays in the conference hall." He clinked his glass against Marcus's empty one. "You know what I love about this city? Nobody's pretending. You want to lose money, you lose money. You want to fuck up your marriage, you fuck it up. The rest of the world, everyone's acting like they got principles. Here? We're just animals."

The pool water rippled as a woman dove in, breaking the surface's perfect calm. Marcus watched her rise from the blue, streaming water, her face marked by something like relief or escape. His phone buzzed persistently, a tiny, demanding pulse on the concrete.

"Bullshit," Marcus said.

"What?"

"All of it. The market. The numbers. This." He gestured at the pool, at the city beyond it. "We're all just pretending we know what comes next."

The salesman laughed, loud and startled. "Man, you've had too much sun."

Maybe. But Marcus couldn't remember the last time he'd believed anything that came out of his own mouth. He stood up, grabbed his iPhone, and walked toward the water's edge. The screen showed seventeen unread messages, three missed calls. He didn't unlock it. Just slipped it into his pocket, where it vibrated against his hip, a tiny, insistent heartbeat in the desert heat.

"I'm going in," Marcus said, and stepped into the pool.