The Last Call

The resort bar was nearly empty at 2 AM, just Marcus and the bartender whose name tag read RAJ in fading gold letters. Outside, the wind rustled the palm fronds with a sound like dry whispering, like ghosts trying to remember the words to a song they'd sung a thousand years ago.

Marcus checked his iPhone again. Nothing. No missed calls, no texts. Just the bright screen illuminating his face in the mirror behind the bar, thirty-eight years old and looking older tonight. He'd flown to Miami for what was supposed to be a celebratory dinner with his wife—their anniversary, fifteen years—but she'd emailed that morning to say she needed space. Time to think.

"You look like a zombie, my friend," Raj said, polishing a glass that was already clean. "You want another?"

Marcus almost said no. He'd already had three. But the room was spinning pleasantly, and he didn't want to go upstairs to the empty suite where Elena's perfume would still be on the pillows from her reconnaissance visit yesterday, the test run for the trip they'd planned together.

"Sure," Marcus said. "Why not."

He'd spent the past decade moving through life on autopilot—waking up, commuting, working late, coming home to dinners grown cold, sleeping beside a woman who'd somehow become a stranger in their shared bed. A zombie in a suit, eating brains and climbing ladders and never feeling quite alive.

"You know what the problem is?" Marcus heard himself say. He never talked to strangers. But there was something about Raj's tired eyes, the way he nodded like he'd heard it all before. "I think I died somewhere around 2008, and nobody bothered to tell me."

Raj set down the glass and studied him. Outside, a sphinx moth battered itself against the glass, drawn to the neon sign.

"The thing about zombies," Raj said quietly, "is they always want something. Brains. Life. But they don't know what to do with it once they get it."

Marcus stared at him. Then he laughed—a real laugh, the first in months.

"What?" Raj smiled.

"Nothing. Just... you're right." Marcus pulled his iPhone from his pocket. The screen lit up with a notification: a calendar reminder for a meeting tomorrow that didn't matter, for a job that didn't matter, in a life that somehow, somewhere along the way, had stopped mattering too.

He thumbed the power button, and the screen went dark. For the first time in years, his pocket felt lighter.

"You know," Marcus said, staring at the black glass, "I used to think the worst thing was being alone."

"And now?"

"Now I think the worst thing is being alone together."

Outside, the wind picked up. The palm trees bent against it, flexible and resilient. Marcus paid his tab and left the iPhone on the counter, face down like a sleeping thing.

"You're leaving this?" Raj called after him.

"Yeah," Marcus said, already walking toward the beach. "I think I'm done being dead."