Swimming in Circles

The pool had been green for three weeks. Not the inviting turquoise of travel brochures, but a murky, algae-thickened green that matched the exact shade of Marie's eyes when she looked at him now. Martin stood at the edge, wine glass in hand, watching the surface like it might offer answers it refused to surrender.

"You're doing it again," Marie said from the lounge chair. She didn't look up from her phone. "That zombie thing."

"What zombie thing?"

"That thing where you're physically present but your soul hasn't checked in for months. You just stare at things. The pool. The toaster. Me. Like you're waiting for someone to issue commands." She finally looked at him. "It's not sexy, Martin. It's sad."

He wanted to argue, but she wasn't wrong. Since the layoff—since the third round of "we're restructuring" in four years—he'd been moving through life on autopilot. Wake, coffee, scroll through job postings that didn't exist, sleep. Repeat. He was, by any reasonable definition, a zombie. But the movie kind was better: at least they had purpose.

"The goldfish died," he said instead.

Marie sighed. "Which one?"

"The orange one. The one that looked like it was perpetually surprised."

"They all look surprised. They're fish. They spend their entire lives swimming in tiny circles, forgetting everything every seven seconds." She sat up, setting her phone on the glass table between them. "You know what my therapist says about goldfish? She says they're proof that ignorance is bliss. They don't know they're trapped. They don't know they're going nowhere. They just... swim."

Martin stared at the pool again. "Maybe they're not trapped. Maybe they're exactly where they're supposed to be."

"Is that what you tell yourself?" Her voice softened. "That you're exactly where you're supposed to be?"

"No." He set down his wine glass and stepped to the pool's edge. "I tell myself that circles aren't always bad. Sometimes they're just... spirals waiting to happen."

Martin stripped off his shirt and dove in before he could talk himself out of it. The water was shocking, silty, alive. He broke the surface gasping, algae clinging to his skin like a second chance. Marie was watching now, really watching, the phone forgotten.

"You're going to get an infection," she said, but she was standing up.

"Probably." He treaded water, staring up at the darkening sky. "But I'm not a zombie anymore."

Marie considered him for a long moment. Then she dove in too, clothes and all. When she surfaced beside him, algae in her hair, she didn't look at her phone. She didn't look sad. She looked surprised, like a fish discovering its tank had no walls.

"Circles," she said, and began to swim.