The Last Supper Before Waking

Mara watched Arthur chew. His jaw moved with the mechanical precision of something that had forgotten why eating mattered. Four years of marriage had reduced him to this—a zombie in a tailored suit, sitting across from her in this overpriced restaurant where the waiter had just described the spinach with reverential adjectives she couldn't bring herself to repeat.

"It's good," Arthur said, not looking at her. "You should try yours."

Her salmon sat untouched. She'd ordered it because it was the most expensive thing on the menu, a small rebellion against their carefully budgeted life. The orange reduction sauce gleamed like amber warning lights, bright and acidic against the fish.

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, illuminating their corner booth with harsh white light. For a split second, she saw them as they must appear to anyone watching: two people who had become strangers sharing a meal.

"Remember when we used to come here on our anniversary?" she asked, her voice barely carrying over the ambient clatter of silverware.

Arthur finally looked up. His eyes were the same color they'd been when he'd proposed in the rain, wild with hope and terrifying certainty. Now they were just—tired. "We still come here."

"We did. Past tense." She traced the rim of her wine glass. "We stopped counting after year two."

The waiter appeared with their check, sensing their conversation had become something else. Something that didn't require appetizer refills.

"Arthur," she said when he was gone. "When did you start feeling like you were already dead?"

He set down his fork. The metal clinked against ceramic, a sound of something small breaking.

"I don't know," he said, and the honesty in his voice was more terrible than any lie. "Maybe I never felt properly alive to begin with."

More lightning flashed, closer now. The storm that had been threatening all evening had finally arrived.

"I can't do this anymore," she said, not crying, not yet. "I can't keep eating beside someone who's already gone."

Arthur nodded once, slowly, like he'd been waiting for permission to stop pretending.

"Okay," he said.

Outside, the rain began to fall. They paid the bill separately. They left together, but not with each other. And somewhere between the restaurant and the subway station, she finally understood: the real tragedy wasn't that he'd become a zombie. It was that she'd learned how to love one.