What the Palm Reader Saw
The resort in CancĂşn was supposed to save us. That was the lie Elena told herself when she booked the trip, and the lie I told myself when I agreed to come. Now it's day four, and I'm watching her pick at her breakfast. She's separating the papaya into meticulous little cubes, each one the same size, while I nurse a coffee that stopped being hot twenty minutes ago.
"You're not eating," she says, not looking up from her fruit sculpture.
I shrug. "Not hungry."
"We paid for the all-inclusive," she says. "You should eat something."
The truth is, I haven't been hungry for anything in months. I move through my days like a zombie—shower, commute, office, commute home, sleep, repeat. Elena's routine is no different. We're two zombies moving in parallel orbits, occasionally colliding in the kitchen or bedroom but never truly connecting.
Later, we find ourselves at the resort's makeshift spa, where a woman with tired eyes and a lined face offers palm readings. Elena insists. She believes in this stuff—or maybe she just believes in anything that might give us answers.
The old woman takes my hand, studies the lines on my palm with clinical detachment. She traces the life line, the heart line, her fingers rough against my skin. She frowns.
"You've been walking dead," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "But you're not dead yet."
She looks up at me, and for a second, I think she might cry.
"The heart line," she says. "It's faint, but it's still there. Some people's fade completely. Yours—yours is waiting for something to wake it up again."
That night, we avoid the resort restaurant and find a local place off the main strip. Elena orders spinach enchiladas, something green and alive and real. When the food comes, she reaches across the table and takes my hand, her palm warm against mine.
"I don't want to be a zombie anymore," she says.
I squeeze her hand. "Me neither."
The papaya cubes, the palm reader's prophecy, the spinach—these aren't solutions. But they're something. They're a start. And for the first time in months, I feel something resembling hunger.