Poolside at the Starlight

The cable had been out for three days when she finally asked for the divorce.

Jim sat by the motel pool, nursing a whiskey that had gone warm in the desert heat. Above him, the coaxial cable swung loose from the exterior wall, severed by the summer storm that had swept through Tempe two nights ago. No signal. No distractions. Just the relentless Arizona sun and the realization that his marriage had died somewhere in the static between paid programming and infomercials.

He'd come here to think, but mostly he'd been remembering.

The goldfish, for instance. The one they'd won at a county fair five years ago, swimming in its plastic bag while she'd rested her head on his shoulder on the drive home. They'd named it Captain because it kept swimming toward the front of the bowl, like it was steering somewhere. It lived three years, which the pet store clerk claimed was a miracle. Jim had flushed it himself while she was at work. She'd cried when she found out—not about the fish, but that he'd done it without her.

The baseball tickets were still on his nightstand at home. Game seven, last season, when they'd both sworn they'd go. They'd been fighting about something trivial then—he couldn't even remember what now—and by the time they made up, the tickets were expired. The team had lost. He still had the stubs.

"Mind if I join you?"

Jim looked up. A woman in her late thirties, dark hair pulled back, holding two glasses of white wine. He gestured to the empty chair beside him.

"Cable's out," he said, by way of explanation.

"So I've heard. Third day, right?" She sat, handing him a glass. "I'm Elena. Front desk."

"Jim."

"You're here from the divorce, aren't you?" she asked matter-of-factly. "Happens. People come here when they can't go home yet. Or when they're not ready to go back."

Jim nodded, staring at the pool's still surface. The water was an impossible blue, artificial as a dream, and so calm that he could see his own reflection distorted in the ripples. He'd aged in the past year. The face looking back seemed carved from something harder than he remembered.

"My husband left two years ago," Elena said, following his gaze. "We'd been married seventeen years. One day he just didn't come home from work. Called from a motel in Flagstaff to say he'd met someone else. Said he'd forgotten how to want anything anymore, and then suddenly he wanted everything."

"Did you hate him?"

"For a while. Then I realized—I'd forgotten how to want things too. We were just two goldfish in a bowl, swimming in circles, pretending we were going somewhere." She swirled her wine. "So, are you going back?"

"To what? The house? The cable bill? The baseball tickets from the game we never went to?" Jim laughed bitterly. "She said we'd become roommates who occasionally had sex. She wasn't wrong."

"The water's warmer than it looks," Elena said. "I swim laps every morning before the guests wake up. Six in the morning, before the heat sets in. You should join me."

"I don't have a suit."

"Underwear works. No one's watching at six."

She left him there with the wine and the settling twilight. The desert stars were emerging, sharp and merciless as they always were out here—no light pollution to soften them. Jim finished the whiskey and then the wine. The cable still dangled from the wall, useless as a hangman's noose.

In the motel room, he packed his clothes. The baseball tickets went into the trash can by the desk. He checked his phone—no missed calls, no messages. Maybe that was its own kind of answer.

At 5:58 the next morning, he stood at the edge of the pool in his boxer shorts, watching Elena's silhouette cutting through the water with steady, purposeful strokes. She didn't look back. He dipped his foot into the pool's edge, testing it.

Cold. Shocking, bracing cold.

Jim exhaled and slid into the water, and for the first time in years, he couldn't see the bottom.