The Dead of August

The pool at the Desert Inn was empty, save for me and the reflection of a sun that refused to quit. August in Palm Springs wasn't a vacation; it was a penance. I'd come here to finish the novel I'd been threatening to write since my divorce—three years of procrastination wrapped in what my ex called "existential dread" and what I called "being a zombie in corporate America."

The hat arrived first. Wide-brimmed, straw, the kind wealthy women wore to charity galas or to shield themselves from paparazzi who weren't there. The woman who placed it on the chaise next to mine was perhaps forty-five, with skin the color of expensive leather and eyes that had seen too much. She didn't speak, merely stripped to a black one-piece and lowered herself into the water with the grace of someone who'd spent a lifetime being watched.

I should have left. I should have packed my laptop and my half-formed sentences about midlife crisis and fled to the air-conditioned safety of my room. But I stayed, rooted by the way she moved through the water, cutting silent lanes while my dead words mocked me from the screen.

The dog came later—a golden retriever with graying muzzle who trotted onto the pool deck unattended, as if he owned the place. The woman emerged from the water, water slicking back her hair, revealing a face that was both harder and softer than I'd expected. She called the dog's name—Barnaby—and he bounded to her, shaking water droplets that caught the dying light.

"He's not mine," she said, finally looking at me. "He belongs to the woman in 302. She died yesterday."

The words hung between us like smoke. I closed my laptop. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. She was ninety-two and ready. I'm her daughter. I came to settle her affairs and found myself sitting by this pool instead." She paused. "You look like someone who's grieving something that hasn't quite died yet."

The accuracy of it knocked the breath from me. We sat there as the sun surrendered to twilight, two strangers beside a pool that had become a confessional, watched by a dog who'd lost his person but found himself with two others who might understand.

"I think," I said finally, "I might have something to write about now."

She smiled, and it was the first genuine thing I'd seen in three years. "Then write it. Before you become something that can't come back."

The zombie, I realized, wasn't the living dead. It was the person who stopped noticing when they were still alive.