Water Zombifies Everything

Elena sat by the clubhouse pool, margarita sweating onto the glass table, watching Simon play padel with his business partner. The ball popped against the racket—rhythmic, precise, devoid of joy. Simon's thinning hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, and for a moment Elena couldn't remember the last time she'd wanted to run her fingers through it.

"You look like a zombie," she'd told him yesterday, when he'd come home at 10 PM again, eyes glazed from spreadsheet fatigue. He'd laughed, but the sound had hollowed out over years of mergers and acquisitions.

Now, his opponent's wife sat beside Elena, talking about their daughter's goldfish—how it had lived seven years, far longer than expected, until one morning they'd found it floating, belly-up, tiny orange body perfectly preserved in that suspended moment between life and whatever came after.

"Seven years," the woman repeated, shaking her head. "That's longer than some marriages I know."

Elena thought of the goldfish bowl in their own foyer, the one Simon had brought home when their son was born. The fish was gone now—buried in the garden years ago—but the bowl remained, empty and gathering dust on the sideboard. She thought of Simon in their bedroom each night, reaching for her with practiced hands but zombie eyes, movements as mechanical as the paddle hitting the ball across the net.

The match ended. Simon approached, grinning, sweat dripping from his chin. He leaned down to kiss her, and she caught the scent of chlorine and expensive gin. He smelled like other women's perfume sometimes, but she'd stopped asking. Like a goldfish, her memory looped in seven-second intervals of forgiveness.

"Another round?" he asked.

"Why not," she said, and something inside her floated, belly-up, suspended in that moment between staying and leaving, between the woman she was and the zombie she was becoming.