The Weight of Water

Margarita adjusted the wide-brimmed hat against the midday sun, though the hotel pool area was deserted except for her. The conference breakout session had been endless—PowerPoints and buzzwords about 'synergy' and 'paradigm shifts'—and she'd needed escape. Now, legs dangling in the cool water, she tried to remember who she was before the divorce.

Her wet hair clung to her neck in dark ropes. She'd stopped coloring it after David moved out. The gray that had started appearing at her temples last year now streaked through like silver veins in marble. People said she looked 'distinguished.' She felt porous, leaking something essential.

'You're missing the keynote.'

She jumped. Thomas from accounting stood behind her, holding two plastic cups from the hotel bar. He'd been running interference with clients all week, that frantic energy she'd found irritating until she realized it masked something gentler underneath.

'I'd rather drown,' she said, but accepted the gin and tonic he offered.

He sat on the lounge chair beside hers, not touching the water. 'My ex-wife got the dog in the settlement. Bernese mountain dog. I still have custody of the hair on everything I own.' He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.

'That's the worst part,' she said. 'The things you didn't know you'd miss. I don't miss David. I miss the idea of who we were going to be.'

Thomas nodded, understanding without speaking. The pool's surface rippled in the breeze—tiny waves that started nowhere and ended nothing.

'I keep running,' he said finally. 'Literally. Five miles every morning. But I'm not going anywhere.'

She slid into the water, letting it close over her head. For a moment, weightless, suspended, she couldn't tell up from down. Then she broke the surface, gasping.

'Thomas,' she said, 'take off your shoes.'

He did. They sat feet submerged as the afternoon wore on, two people treading water in the deep end, not quite drowning, not quite swimming. Just existing in the space between before and after, watching the light move across the pool bottom like something they used to know.