“Smart,” said Mark. “You have to strike while the iron is hot.”
“I’m in the water right now,” John said, gesturing at the pool.
At five o’clock, John found himself standing by the grill with Kevin, flipping burgers that the caterers had already prepared. Kevin was talking about his boat. john persons pool party
“I’m not going to drown myself in my own pool, Priya.”
John stared at her. The pool glittered beyond the hedge, full of splashing children and floating drink koozies and the buoyant, hollow laughter of people who had never lost a single thing that mattered. “Smart,” said Mark
John walked to the edge of the pool. The water was still now, smooth as glass, reflecting the first stars. He thought about the word foreclosure . He thought about the word liquidity . He thought about the word person , which was his last name and also his condition—the state of being a single, fragile thing in a world that did not care about fragility.
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. Kevin was talking about his boat
This was unavoidable. The neighborhood was full of people who had bought their houses in 2015 for $400,000 and were now sitting on $1.2 million of borrowed equity. They spoke about interest rates the way sailors spoke about tides—with superstitious dread and the quiet certainty that the water would eventually rise to kill them all.