The Sweet Rot

Marcus sliced through the humid air, his padel racket cutting a sharp arc against the evening sky. The ball bounced off the glass wall with a hollow thud—too hard, always too hard lately. Elena didn't even flinch as it sailed past her.

"You're not even trying," he said, chest heaving.

Elena leaned against her racket, watching something beyond the court. "There's a fox again. By the garden."

He followed her gaze. A flash of rust-colored fur vanished into the hydrangeas. Third time this week. "Should get traps."

"It's just trying to live, Marcus."

They showered separately now—a ritual that had calcified into something efficient and cold. Dinner was the papaya she'd bought at the specialty market, a ridiculous expenditure for fruit that tasted like nothing, like something you ate while pretending to be somewhere else. She cut it into uneven wedges, the flesh salmon-pink and glistening.

"Remember Costa Rica?" she asked, not looking at him.

"It was ten years ago, El."

"We were going to open that hostel. Remember? You were going to quit banking."

"And then what? Live on rice and papaya?"

She put her fork down. "I found the transfer application on your desk. London."

Marcus said nothing.

"The fox was eating the fallen papaya yesterday," she said quietly. "The ones that rotted on the ground because we never got around to picking them. You know what it did?"

He shook his head.

"It buried them. Like it was saving something for later." Her laugh was sharp and broken. "Even a fox knows to hold onto things."

Outside, the fox screamed—that high, human cry that always made the hair on his arms rise. Marcus looked at his wife, really looked at her, and saw how carefully she was holding herself together, how she'd been holding them together for years.

"I'll withdraw the application," he said.

Elena picked up her fork again. "The fruit's gone soft," she said. "But it's still sweet."