“You should come out with us sometime. Get on the water.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what scares me. Because you’re already drowning. You just haven’t noticed because the water’s warm.” john persons pool party
He took the margarita. The salt stung a small cut on his lip. He didn’t remember getting the cut. Probably from shaving. Or maybe from the dream he’d been having lately, the one where he was drowning in a pool full of broken glass. He didn’t tell Linda about that dream. He didn’t tell her a lot of things anymore. “You should come out with us sometime
The filter pump hummed.
“What thing?”
And somewhere beneath the surface, in the blue quiet of the deep end, a man who had built an empire out of nothing and watched it turn back into nothing learned the only lesson the water would ever teach him: Because you’re already drowning
She walked away. The hedge closed behind her. John stood alone among the roses and listened to the party continue without him. He heard Linda’s laugh, high and bright, the laugh she used when she was pretending everything was fine. He heard Kevin’s son ask for another hot dog. He heard the filter pump of the pool, humming its steady, mechanical heart, scrubbing the water clean of everything that had ever been inside it.