The Pool Where Nothing Drowns

The pool at the Vista Royale Hotel had been leaking for three weeks. Tomas stood at the edge, staring at the **water** level dropping another inch, watching the **palm** fronds dance across the surface like skeletal fingers. He was supposed to be fixing the underground **cable** that powered the filtration system, but he'd been standing there for twenty minutes, holding his wrench like a question he didn't want answered.

"Mr. Hernandez?" A woman's voice. He turned to find her standing at the pool gate—Mara, from housekeeping. Her uniform was too large, swallowing her small frame.

"The guests are complaining," she said. "About the noise from the pump room. They say it sounds like—"

"Like something dying," he finished.

She smiled, and he found himself wondering how old she was. Thirty? Thirty-five? Her eyes held that particular exhaustion he recognized from mirrors.

"My ex-husband used to say hotels are just places where people pretend to be happy," she said suddenly. "While we keep **running** around, making sure their lies don't leak like your pool."

"He sounds perceptive."

"He was an asshole. But sometimes assholes see things clearly."

A guest in a white robe approached, looking between them with vague hostility. Tomas adjusted his tool belt and opened the hatch to the pump room. The noise was deafening—a mechanical scream.

Two hours later, the **cable** was replaced. He washed his hands in the utility sink, watching the gray water swirl down the drain. His ex-wife had left him three years ago for a lawyer who could afford mistakes. He'd stayed because the devil he knew was better than the one who'd collect on his student loans.

That night, he sat on his balcony with a scotch he couldn't afford, listening to the **pool** filter's new hum. Mara appeared on the adjacent balcony, cigarette glowing in the darkness.

"It's fixed," she called over.

"For now. Everything breaks again."

"Not everything." She exhaled smoke. "Some things just stop."

He thought about the **water** that had leaked from the pool, thousands of gallons quietly disappearing into the earth. How no one had noticed until it was too late. How that was probably the story of his life.

"You going to stay here forever?" she asked.

"I was going to ask you the same thing."

"I'm twenty-eight," she said, as if that explained anything. "My mother says I have good childbearing hips. She doesn't know I haven't been touched in two years."

The **palm** trees swayed between them, casting shadows like cage bars.

"Tomorrow," she continued, "I'm putting in my transfer request. Miami. Maybe farther. Anywhere that isn't this place where nothing changes but the guests."

"And the leaks."

"And the leaks." She stubbed out her cigarette. "You could come. If you wanted. If you're tired of being the man who fixes things that only break again."

He thought about his pension. His chair. The familiar ache in his knees. How safety was just fear wearing a suit.

"I don't even know your last name," he said.

"Rodriguez. But I'm changing it. Too many ghosts attached to the old one."

He finished his drink. The **running** water of the fountain below whispered that safety was an illusion.

"Tomas," he said. "If we're doing last names."

"Well then, Tomas. You can die by this pool, fixing the same cable until your hands forget how to hold anything else. Or you can pack a bag."

"Just like that?"

"No one writes obituaries for people who almost lived."

He stood up and walked to the railing. Below, the **pool** reflected the moon like imperfect silver. He'd spent forty years becoming the kind of man who stayed. Maybe it was time to become someone who left.

"Miami's nice," she said, her voice soft now. "Or we could go further. California. Oregon. Anywhere there's water that moves."

He looked at his apartment door, then at her balcony two feet away. Some distances couldn't be measured in feet.

"I have a suitcase somewhere," he said. "I think it still zips."