The Vitamin Deficiency of Middle Age

Marcus stepped onto the padel court, his knees protesting in that particular way they did now at forty-two. Elena was already there, stretching with that ferocious intensity she'd developed since the divorce.

'You're late,' she said, not looking up from her hamstring stretch. 'And you smell like despair.'

'My cat threw up in my shoes this morning,' Marcus lied, though Barnaby — the cat in question — had done no such thing. The truth was more pathetic: he'd spent twenty minutes staring at his vitamin supplements, paralyzed by the realization that his entire adult life could be reduced to a daily regimen of pills designed to postpone the inevitable.

Elena snorted. 'That animal hates you.'

'That's because he has good taste.'

They played. The padel ball cracked against their rackets, a satisfying violence that Marcus craved. At one point, after losing yet another point, he leaned against the glass wall, gasping.

'I ran into Sarah,' Elena said suddenly. 'She's married now. Two kids.'

Marcus nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Sarah had been his almost-love, the one who got away seven years ago when he chose ambition over vulnerability. The choice had made sense then. It made less sense now, standing here sweat-soaked and exhausted while his best friend watched him with that terrible knowing look.

'I started taking vitamin D,' he said, apropos of nothing. 'My doctor says I'm deficient.'

'We're all deficient, Marcus.'

Afterward, they sat at the café across the street. Elena picked at her spinach salad, moving the leaves around her plate like she was arranging them for an aesthetic that refused to cohere.

'Maybe I should get a cat,' she said. 'At least they can't leave you.'

'Mine hasn't left me in spirit,' Marcus said. 'He's just very honest about his contempt.'

Elena laughed — really laughed, for the first time in months. Marcus felt something in his chest loosen, just a fraction.

'This friend thing we do,' she said, gesturing between them with her fork. 'It's enough, isn't it?'

Marcus looked at his friend — at the lines around her eyes that had deepened this year, at the spinach stuck to her lip, at the way she'd soldiered through a divorce that would have broken him. He thought about his vitamins, his cat, his almost-love with Sarah, and the peculiar way life narrowed even as it expanded.

'It has to be,' he said.

The padel court waited for next week. The vitamins waited in his cabinet. The cat waited at home, presumably planning new methods of psychological warfare. For now, there was just spinach and friendship and the strange, sufficient inadequacy of middle age.