Tropical Malaise

Mara watched the papaya turn to mush on her plate, its orange flesh collapsing like something dead. In the courtyard below, David shouted point scores, his padel game with that woman from accounting—the one with the laugh like breaking glass. The humidity pressed against the resort's floor-to-ceiling windows, a heavy blanket.

"You look like a zombie," David had told her that morning, before rushing off to the court. "Take some vitamin D. You're always so tired."

He meant it kindly, she supposed. He'd been saying it for years—the prescription for everything that hollowed her out. The vitamins sat in their amber bottles on the bathroom counter, a regimented little army of solutions that never solved anything.

Mara pushed her chair back and walked to the lobby aquarium, where three goldfish traced identical circles in neon-lit water. They'd been doing it when she arrived three days ago. They'd be doing it when she left.

"The thing about goldfish," said a voice beside her, "is they don't know they're swimming in circles."

She turned. A man—maybe sixty, silver-haired, holding a gin and tonic with shaky hands.

"My wife loves this place," he continued, nodding toward the padel courts. "She says it recharges us. I think it just makes us forget what we're going back to."

Mara looked at her wedding ring, white gold, catching the artificial light. "David says I need more vitamins."

The man laughed, dry and surprised. "Mine says I need more purpose. Maybe they're right."

Below them, David high-fived the woman with the breaking-glass laugh. His face was alive in a way Mara hadn't seen in years. She felt something crack open inside her—not breaking, exactly. More like a seed finally splitting.

"I think," she said slowly, "I think I'm going to stop taking the vitamins."

The goldfish swam on, endlessly circling, somehow believing each lap was new.