Holy Water by James P. Othmer

then they (Rachel first, he ’ s certain) decided that they had outgrown it. Their friends ’ escapades with love and drugs, real careers and fantasy vocations no longer seemed original or terribly important. Tedious patterns began to emerge. Ill-considered behaviors were repeated. What had seemed outrageous began to register as immature. What had once passed as interesting had become banal. Melodramatic. It had rained three weekends in a row at the end of that summer, canceling the last August visits of the season to their Amagansett beach rental, which, after three years with the same people, had also become tedious, tiresome, banal. Melodramatic.
     
    They ’ d both been working social-life-killing hours at jobs at which their entry-level, young-professional-on-the-rise energy and optimism had already been replaced by increased responsibility and, yes, money, as well as questions of a deeper philosophical nature. Also, Rachel was in the middle of a feud with her best friend, which added to her already bored state of mind.
     
    So the early October invitation to a fall harvest festival at the northern Westchester County home of one of Rachel ’ s married coworkers seemed like something worth trying. Something new. On the Hudson Line train heading north, coming out of the first tunnel and seeing the sun-blasted leaves against a cloudless sky, they both felt it—that they were no longer mired in the expected but on the verge of something new and fresh and altogether different. Even the sky seemed of another place, much cleaner than the sky they ’ d just left.
     
    And even though her friend ’ s fall harvest festival was tedious and corny, apple this and pumpkin that— ” They ’ re acting like they grew and harvested everything down to the last gourd and are sharing them with the original Mayflower pilgrims, ” Rachel had whispered to him—they had to admit they did enjoy themselves, and the children running through the leaf piles were kind of fun.
     
    On the train ride back to Manhattan that evening in a slight drizzle, during which some leaves had already begun to fall, they sipped takeout cups of green tea with lemon and leaned against each other, talking about the river and hiking trails and adjustable-rate mortgages. By the time they slipped back underground and their day in the country had come to a close, they had already made up their minds. It was time to leave the city, cash in their options, and buy a big-ass house in the country like her kind-of-friend ’ s, and maybe, at some point, start a family.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    For a second Henry looks directly into the sun hanging over the magnolia on the southwest side of the pool and is so blinded by its afternoon rays that he becomes disoriented. He loses his balance and slowly tips over sideways. Scrambling back to his knees, he glances toward the kitchen window to see if Rachel was looking. Hard to tell for sure, but he doesn ’ t think she ’ s in there. Probably in the office, still on her conference call. And even if she was looking, he wonders if it would have registered that he had fallen. Because looking at something and seeing it are completely different things, and he knows that she hasn ’ t seen him in a long time. He gathers himself with several deep breaths and realizes that he has not eaten since breakfast. Not during the focus group or even after the psychiatrist/workout session with Norman. So it ’ s no wonder he stumbled, especially in this heat.
     
    He knows there ’ s one thing you ’ re supposed to balance first, and once you get that right, you move on to the others. He thinks it ’ s the alkalinity, but he can ’ t be sure. The back label of the alkalinity increaser jug offers no help. Neither does the label on the pH in-creaser. He has an entire milk crate filled with chemicals: increasers, decreasers , clarifiers, shocks, algicides , balancers. He has liquid chlorine, powdered chlorine, one-inch tabs and three-inch hockey