John Persons Pool Party |work| -

“John.”

He took a breath.

“Like what?”

By three, the guests arrived.

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. john persons pool party

He dove underwater to escape the question. The pool muffled everything. For seven seconds, he existed only as weight, only as displacement. Then he surfaced, and the noise returned: laughter, the hiss of a soda can opening, the splash of Kevin’s ten-year-old daughter doing a cannonball. “John