The Layoff Pool

The water in the apartment complex pool was still, reflecting the security light like a bruised eye. Elena sat on the edge at 2 AM, her legs dangling in, her blazer still on from the office.

"You're going to turn into a prune," said a voice from the darkness.

She didn't jump. She'd been swimming in this kind of exhaustion for months. "Marcus. You stalking me now?"

He stepped into the light, holding two glasses of wine. "Just saw your light on. Figured you might need this after the meeting."

Elena accepted the glass. The quarterly review had been a bloodbath. They'd sat around the conference table like sharks in a feeding frenzy, all of them pretending not to know about the layoff pool that'd been circulating on Slack since January. Fifty bucks an entry. Pick who gets axed. Winner takes all.

She'd won last round. Three hundred dollars. The money still sat in her nightstand, burning a hole through the wood.

"I heard you put in for Davidson," Marcus said, sitting beside her. "Before the announcement."

"I didn't know he was going to kill himself, Marcus." Her voice cracked. "He'd been with the company twenty years. His daughter's tuition was due. I thought... I thought he'd just retire."

"Nobody thought that. That's why the pool was so big." He took a sip of wine. "You wearing your lucky hat to the funeral?"

She'd worn her grandfather's fedora to the service. A shield. Something to hide behind. "You don't get to judge me. You put in for Sarah."

"Sarah's got a trust fund. She's swimming in money. It's different."

"Is it?" Elena stood up, stripped off her blazer. "Watch this."

She dove into the pool fully clothed, the water shocking her skin cold. When she surfaced, gasping, Marcus was on his feet, laughing softly.

"What are you doing?"

"Swimming," she said, treading water. "Like I'm not drowning up there. Like I'm not one of them. Like I didn't take three hundred dollars from a man's death."

Marcus pulled off his suit jacket. "Move over."

They swam in silence for a long time, two fully clothed ghosts in a chlorinated sea, while somewhere in the apartment complex, someone started another pool. Twenty bucks on who cracks first.

Elena's hat sat on the deck, watching them both.