Poolside Intelligence

The hotel bar smelled of chlorine and stale gin. Elena sat alone, nursing her drink, watching a baseball game flicker silently on the mounted television. Some team she didn't care about was losing, much like her marriage, it seemed.

Her iphone vibrated against the mahogany bar—her husband David's location sharing updating again. He was supposed to be at a conference in Chicago, same as her. Instead, he'd been stationary at a residential address in the suburbs for three hours.

"You're going to burn a hole in that screen," said a woman beside her—mid-fifties, sharp eyes, empty martini glass.

Elena jumped. "Sorry. Just checking work."

The woman laughed, dry and knowing. "Honey, I've been watching you watch that phone for twenty minutes. You're not checking work. You're checking on him."

Elena felt herself flush. "I don't know what you mean."

"Sure you do." The woman gestured toward the pool table where two younger men were playing badly. "See how they keep glancing at their phones too? Everyone's a spy now. We're all surveilling each other, pretending we're not."

Elena's throat tightened. "He's my husband."

"That makes it worse, doesn't it?" The woman's tone softened. "I caught my first husband doing the same thing. 1998. No location sharing then—I had to hire an actual investigator. Followed him to a Marriott two towns over. Do you know what I learned?"

Elena shook her head.

"That I'd become someone who needed to know. That distrust changes you more than betrayal does." She signaled the bartender. "Another round for both of us. On me."

The phone vibrated again. David's location hadn't moved.

"What did you do?" Elena asked quietly.

"I stopped watching." The woman's martini arrived. "I realized I was only hurting myself. The knowing—or suspecting—was eating me alive. So I chose to stop being a spy in my own marriage. Either way, I was going to be miserable. I'd rather be miserable with dignity."

Elena looked at her iphone, then at the blurred baseball players on the screen, then at the pool table where one of the young men missed an easy shot, laughing despite himself. Somewhere in this city, her husband was with someone else.

She turned her phone face-down on the bar.

"You're right," Elena said. "I'm done watching."