Under Orange Skies

The pool at the Marriott courtyard was empty, which was exactly what Mark needed. He sat on the edge, feet dangling in the chlorinated water, nursing an old fashioned he'd impulsively ordered from the hotel bar. The orange glow of sunset reflected off the water's surface, making everything look deceptively warm.

Three hours earlier, he'd sat in a conference room watching his former friend and business partner, Elena, testify against him. The corporate Espionage lawsuit had been dragging on for eight months, but seeing her on the stand—reciting emails, timestamped conversations, the late-night brainstorming sessions they'd shared over whiskey—that was the blade that finally twisted. She'd traded their seven-year partnership, their friendship, for immunity and a consulting contract with the very competitor they'd both sworn to destroy.

Mark had barely made it through the deposition before walking out. He'd checked into this hotel under a different name, needing distance from his apartment, from his lawyers, from the laptop that contained the remnants of the company they'd built together.

Behind him, a television mounted above the hot tub played a baseball game—the Dodgers down by two in the seventh. Mark had stopped watching sports after the lawsuit hit. Everything reminded him of Elena anyway. She was the one who'd taught him to appreciate baseball's slow rituals, its archaic summer patience. They'd gone to dozens of Giants games together in their early twenties, before the startup, before the money, before everything.

He took a swallow of his drink. The whiskey burned pleasantly. The orange light was fading now, surrendering to twilight.

"Mark?"

The voice hit him like physical impact. He turned, already knowing, and there she was—standing at the pool's edge in a hotel robe, face flushed, wet hair slicked back. Not at the deposition. Not across a conference table. Here. Of all the hotels in San Francisco.

"You're staying here?" she asked, and he heard something break in her voice.

He almost lied. Almost said his name was David Miller, which was what he'd written on the registration card. But the whiskey and the exhaustion and the sheer absurdity of it loosened his tongue.

"I needed to not be Mark for a few hours," he said.

Elena sat beside him, not touching the water. She smelled like hotel shampoo and chlorine.

"They offered me the deal last night," she said quietly. "Immunity if I testified. If I didn't, they were going to charge me too."

"So you chose yourself."

"I chose to survive, Mark. The company was already dead. You know that."

They sat in silence as the baseball game's crowd roared from the television above.

"I missed you," she said.

He finished his drink, the orange sunset now completely gone, replaced by the first pale stars. He wanted to be angry. Wanted to hate her. But looking at her profile against the twilight, he just felt tired.

"The company I could forgive," he said. "But you sat next to me in that deposition room and you didn't even warn me."

"If I had, you would have talked me out of doing what I had to do."

"Maybe," he said, standing up. "Or maybe we could have figured out something together. Isn't that what friends do?"

He walked away without looking back, leaving her alone by the pool as the baseball game faded behind him into the hotel's hollow corridors.