Vitamins for the Living

Elena watched him from behind the tinted window of her car — a amateur spy operation in the parking lot of the upscale padel club. David played with a woman she didn't recognize, his laugh carrying across the pavement like something she hadn't heard in their bedroom in months. He moved with an energy she thought had been permanently extinguished between them, the zombie version of her husband suddenly animate again.

She should leave. This was pathetic. But her hand hovered over the console where his vitamin organizer sat — she'd found it that morning while searching for her missing earrings. Each compartment filled: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Little yellow pills she'd never seen before, not the usual multivitamins he took religiously for years.

The passenger door opened. A woman slid into the seat, reeking of expensive perfume and sweat.

"You're the wife, right?" The woman — the one David had been playing padel with — didn't wait for an answer. "He told me about the affair. His, not yours. That's why you're like this, isn't it?"

Elena's throat tightened. "Like what?"

"Like you died three years ago and forgot to tell anyone." The woman handed her a water bottle, condensation dripping onto Elena's thighs. "He's been trying to wake you up. Those pills? They're B12. For the depression you refuse to treat. He asked me — his therapist's sister, by the way — to help get you out of the house."

The zombie metaphor collapsed. Elena watched David through the windshield, searching for her in the gallery windows, panic rising in his shoulders. She'd been the spy in her own marriage, surveilling ghosts she'd created.

"I'm tired," Elena said, and it was the first true thing she'd spoken in a thousand days.

"Then take the vitamin," the woman said. "Or don't. But stop pretending you're already dead."