The Last Real Thing

Maria stood at the edge of the hotel pool, margarita sweating against her palm. Below the surface, the water turned that strange artificial blue that exists nowhere in nature. She felt like a zombie moving through her own life—since the divorce, everything had been foggy, repetitive. Wake, work, sleep, repeat.

The corporate retreat had been her boss's idea—Gary, that bull of a man who crushed everything in his path with aggressive optimism and quarterly goals. He'd been droning on for three hours about synergy and leaning in, and Maria had needed air.

"You look like you're plotting someone's murder."

She turned. David. Her friend from the old startup days, back when they'd both believed work could mean something. Before the promotions and the compromises and the slow erosion of everything they'd cared about.

"Just Gary," she said. "He's doing that thing where he says 'we're all family' and means 'you're all expendable.'"

David laughed, a sound she hadn't heard in years. He sat beside her, dangling his feet in the pool. Water rippled around his ankles, catching the hotel lights in shifting patterns.

"Remember when we were going to change the world?" he asked softly.

"We were going to build something real."

"Instead we built this." He gestured at the resort, at the distant sounds of the networking event. "A simulacrum of connection. We're all just pretending to be alive."

Maria's throat tightened. She'd forgotten how David could articulate the exact shape of her emptiness.

"I haven't felt real in months," she admitted. "Just going through motions. Like I'm already dead and nobody's told me yet."

"That's the zombie condition, isn't it?" David said. "Walking around in your old life, but you're not really there anymore."

She looked at him—at the lines around his eyes, at the weariness in his posture. He felt it too.

"What would be real?" she asked.

"This." His hand found hers, skin against skin, warm and present. "Not networking. Not synergizing. Just two people who remember who they used to be."

Gary's voice boomed from inside: "Let's circle back on those action items!"

Maria squeezed David's hand. "Screw the action items."

They sat there as the evening deepened, two zombies by the pool, finally feeling something like alive.