The Bear at the Bottom of the Pool

The pool at the Desert Springs Marriott was empty, save for me and the reflection of a sky so blue it felt dishonest. Forty-seven years old and I was hiding from my own engagement party, nursing a whiskey that wasn't mine at the outdoor bar.

"You look like someone trying to decide whether to jump in or jump off," said a woman's voice.

I turned. She was maybe thirty, wearing a floppy sun hat that cast half her face in shadow. Her badge said LINDA, SALES OPERATIONS.

"Just thinking," I said.

"About the bear?" she asked.

"The what?"

She pointed at the tattoo on my forearm—a polar bear I'd gotten at twenty-two, after my first real heartbreak, back when I thought pain was something you could memorialize and move past. Now it was just faded ink on skin that had started to loosen.

"My ex-wife loved bears," I said. "The one before Sarah. I got this the week we broke up."

Linda sat on the lounge chair beside mine. "Let me guess. You thought it would mean something forever."

"Something like that."

"My ex got my name tattooed on his chest," she said. "Right over his heart. I found out he was sleeping with my sister three weeks later. The tattoo's still there, last I heard. Some things don't wash off."

We sat in silence. The pool's surface rippled in the wind.

"I'm supposed to be inside," I said. "Sarah's family flew in from Chicago. Her dad gave a speech about what a catch I am. I make three hundred thousand a year. I have good teeth. I'm a responsible investment."

"But you're out here?"

"Because yesterday I found myself looking at apartment listings in Portland. Because I bought a one-way ticket to Iceland for next month, just to see if I'd actually go. Because sometimes I wonder if the version of me everyone loves is just a really convincing hallucination."

Linda took off her hat. Her hair was dark, matted from hours beneath the fabric. She set it on the table between us.

"You know what my mother told me when I got divorced?" she said. "She said, 'Linda, you don't have to be a bear about it.' Like I was the problem for having claws. Like not wanting to be eaten was the same thing as being difficult."

She laughed, but it was dry.

"What did you say back?"

"I said, 'Mom, maybe some people are supposed to have claws. Maybe that's how they stay whole.'"

The sun was setting. The pool caught fire, orange and violent and beautiful.

"Does Sarah know you're thinking about Iceland?" Linda asked.

"No."

"Then you're already gone, aren't you?"

I looked at the bear on my arm. Its eyes were small, distant, unreadable.

"Yeah," I said. "I think I have been for a long time."

Linda stood up and put her hat back on. "Well," she said. "For what it's worth, I hope you go. Even if you come back."

She walked away toward the hotel. I stayed until the sun disappeared, until the pool went dark and all I could see was my own reflection, wondering which version of myself would finally stand up and walk back inside.