The Pool at Dusk
Elena sat at the edge of the apartment complex pool, her legs submerged in water that had grown too cold for anyone else to venture in. October in Chicago. The pool closed next week.
She was forty-three, and this was the first time she'd lived alone since college. David had moved out three weeks ago, taking his extensive vinyl collection and his emotional unavailability. What he'd left behind: a half-empty jar of pickles, their wedding photos in a box she hadn't opened, and this—this ritual of sitting at the pool at dusk, watching other people's lives through the windows that faced the courtyard.
The woman in 3B was always cooking dinner at this hour. Elena could see her chopping something rhythmic, precise. Probably making that spinach salad she ate every Tuesday and Thursday. There was something admirable about routine. Elena's routines had dissolved with the marriage.
A movement near the fence caught her eye.
A fox—sleek, rust-colored, impossibly self-possessed—stepped into the pool area. It moved like it owned the place, like it had deeded rights to the cracked concrete and the dying geraniums in their pots. The fox approached the pool's edge, looked at Elena with assessing amber eyes, then drank from the stagnant water that had collected in a corner where the drain didn't work.
She should have been startled. Instead, she felt an inexplicable kinship.
"You're not supposed to be here either," she said softly.
The fox lifted its head, water dripping from its muzzle, and regarded her with what looked almost like compassion. Then it turned and vanished through the same gap in the fence it had entered, leaving Elena alone with the gathering dark and the woman in 3B's spinach chopping.
Her phone buzzed on the concrete. A text from David: Left my good watch. Can I come by tomorrow?
She watched the cursor blink. The fox had known when to leave. Some intuitions were worth trusting.
Elena typed: Mail it. Then she stood, water running down her legs, and walked toward her apartment, leaving her phone on the bench beside the pool. The woman in 3B's light went out. Tomorrow, Elena decided, she would introduce herself. She might even ask for that spinach recipe.