The Weight of Water

The bear tattoo on Marcus's shoulder had faded from angry black to the color of old storms, its claws now soft against skin that had seen forty summers. We sat by the apartment complex pool at 2 AM, the water still and dark as a held breath.

"You remember papaya?" Marcus asked, dangling his feet in the chlorinated blue. "How we tried to buy one in Barcelona that summer, and the vendor laughed at our pronunciation?"

I did remember. 2003, before everything broke. Before his wife left, before my promotion, before we became people who discussed investment portfolios instead of dreams. We'd been so young then, and papaya had seemed exotic, a word we said just to taste it.

"Baseball," I said suddenly. "Your dad's glove collection. You promised you'd sell them and start that gym."

Marcus nodded, his sphinx-like profile silhouetted against the security light—inscrutable, carrying secrets I'd stopped asking about years ago. "Still in the attic. My daughter found them last week. Asked what they were."

He was crying silently, tears cutting tracks through the chlorine drying on his cheeks. I'd never seen him cry, not even at his father's funeral. Not even when he called me drunk from a hotel room in Chicago, confessing he'd slept with his assistant and hated himself for it.

"I'm leaving Elena," he said. "Tomorrow."

The pool water lapped against the concrete, a heartbeat in the darkness. In that moment, everything had changed. Or nothing had. Maybe we were still twenty-three, standing on a Spanish street corner with a piece of tropical fruit we couldn't pronounce, so full of hope we could taste it.

"Good," I said, and meant it. "Good."