Masters of the Universe

“This is BS,” Tim insisted.

Andrea looked up at him, shielding her eyes from the sun with her right hand. She rested her magazine in her lap, her bare legs outstretched on the chaise longue. She adjusted her bikini top; the string was digging into the delicate space between her neck and shoulder. “What’s going on?” she asked.

He shook his head and pursed his lips into a thin line. His hands were in fists resting on his hips. “You know, the prime minister and all his security. It’s messing with my vacation vibes.”

Yesterday, Holly, the director of guest relations, had strutted around the pool in her black pantsuit, a dark slash among the bubblegum pink tankinis and highlighter green board shorts and the cloudless azure sky. It had reminded Andrea of high school, when the principal would roam the halls and disrupt that loose time between classes, those lovely, carefree, let’s-be-teenagers moments tightened up by the presence of authority. Holly was tasked with notifying all resort guests that “someone important” was arriving and staying for a few nights, and that security would intensify: metal detectors, wanding, checkpoints. “Keep your keycard on you at all times,” she warned, the shiny corporate grin on her face widening as she spoke. Andrea had noticed the sweat along Holly’s hairline, her patchy makeup starting to melt in the relentless Florida heat.

Tim and Andrea had gossiped enough with the other hotel guests to gather that the “someone important” was the prime minister of a war-torn Eastern European country, a man of military minimalism who stood alongside his comrades. He was in town to meet with the U.S. President, someone who took great pride in his winter home, a gaudily gilded Floridian megamansion: yet another symbol of excess and wealth forced on the American people, most of whom couldn’t afford groceries, or higher education, or mortgages.

A silence passed between Tim and Andrea. On the opposite side of the pool, a baby wailed. A trio of middle-schoolers splashed in the shallow end, tossing a ball back and forth. Idle chatter floated into the ether from a young couple who lounged nearby. They simultaneously scrolled their phones while their newborn slept in a covered stroller. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Andrea reminded him.

Tim looked towards the restaurant and grabbed his laptop off the chaise next to Andrea’s. “I’m going to sit in the bar, work on some projections. Hopefully the wifi isn’t scrambled yet.”

Andrea smiled sweetly. “Okay. I’ll be here.” She picked up her magazine and attempted to continue reading the article she had been plodding through, something about the negative effects of technology on household pets, but the words blurred together, and when she had to reread the same line multiple times – “It seems as though cats in particular are quite sensitive to the instant gratification of a well-placed TikTok” – she folded the magazine shut and shoved it into her beach bag.

It was Tim and Andrea’s first vacation together since their son Nathaniel had left for college, and his absence had left them unstable, a tripod missing a leg. Without Nathaniel to feed, or talk to, or generally parent, Tim and Andrea were left to deal with each other. Tim didn’t appear to be affected by Nathaniel’s departure: he remained the same entitled brat he had somehow morphed into over the years. Andrea, though, used Nathaniel’s absence as an opportunity to perform a solo deep dive into her marriage, and each time she evaluated what they possessed together, she imagined those crime shows when the black light revealed the DNA samples strewn around the hotel room. All the failures, the faults, the wrongdoings: everything was exposed. There were cracks in the façade, like when they went to the Louvre and admired the beauty of the paintings from afar, but when they got up close they noticed that the canvases were marred and pocked, weathered with age.

She looked across the pool at the restaurant and saw Tim’s red baseball cap at the bar, his tanned face blocked by the screen of his laptop. He appeared to be furiously typing away, playing master of the universe in his financial consultant world. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes for a brief moment, enjoying the white noise of the nearby pool party and the warm sun on her face. But her eyes naturally flitted open after 30 seconds or so. She found idling progressively more difficult as she aged, after decades of lawyering and parenting and wife-ing and friend-ing and daughter-ing. She yanked her cell phone to her face to check the time: 1:23 pm. Tim would be occupied until dinner. She grabbed her beach bag, slid her feet into her sandals, and headed back to the room.

She keyed in and encountered a blast of arctic freeze. The thermostat read 60 degrees, and she adjusted it to 65. Housekeeping had cleaned the room, the bedspread neatly pulled flat and tucked, but they had ignored the forest green pastry bags that Tim had accumulated from the resort coffee shop over the last 48 hours. Andrea took inventory: three quarters of a donut remaining in one bag on the dresser; 3 large cookies, untouched, in another bag on the nightstand; an almond croissant with exactly one Tim-shaped bite taken out of it in a bag in the bathroom, of all places. She felt a little fish doing backflips in her belly, and wondered if there was some food donation system out there for neglected baked goods born in five-star hotels.

She decided to hit the gym, changing into a cute athleisure outfit that her fit 48-year-old body could pull off: a millennial pink cropped tank top, matching full length leggings with side pockets, trendy cross trainer sneakers. She tied her long hair into a ponytail and slipped her key card into one of the pockets in her leggings. She shoved her cell phone into the other pocket and left the room.

In the lobby, throngs of bearded men hovered together. They all wore black polo shirts that hugged their globular biceps, and the coils of clear earpieces snaked down beyond their collars. The entrance resembled a TSA checkpoint: metal detector, bag X-ray machine. A large German shepherd roamed the lobby on a leash held by a burly man in a bulletproof vest. Holly stood behind the front desk and gave Andrea a tight smile, as if she herself were being held hostage. Blink twice if you need help, Holly, Andrea thought to herself.

Andrea noticed one particular security guard standing alone near the entrance to the hotel. He seemed to be in his mid-20s, tall and lanky, with a neatly trimmed goatee and soulful eyes rimmed with impossibly long eyelashes. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular: he wasn’t staring at a phone, or checking his watch; he was simply doing his job, paying attention to his surroundings, ensuring everyone else’s safety. She imagined him standing next to the prime minister in their no-frills black T-shirts, two men that possessed power, but knew where to keep it, and how to handle it. Andrea stared at him for a second too long, then turned down the hall that led to the gym.

After her workout, she returned to her room along the same route. She looked for the goateed guard, but a curly-haired redhead wearing sunglasses stood in his place. Her heart sank a millimeter.

That night, Tim and Andrea had dinner at the hotel restaurant. They made small talk on the walk over, catching up on their afternoons. As they settled at the outdoor banquette, they opened their menus simultaneously and studied them as if they were sacred texts, although this was the fourth night in a row they were reading the same words.

“What are you getting?” Andrea murmured, her eyes hovering over the bloated terms: “béarnaise,” “tartufo,” “Wagyu.” She checked her hunger level, which, when she was working, was usually an 8.5 out of 10 by this time of day. Right now, it was more like a 2.

Tim’s eyes roamed the menu with an intensity that Andrea recognized from their larger dinner bills. “I’m looking at the spicy lobster pasta, and maybe some shrimp cocktail, or oysters. Would you want to share a filet as well?”

Andrea glanced around the restaurant. A middle-aged couple silently sipped beaded glasses of white wine. A couple with kindergarten-aged twins cut up their kids’ chicken fingers and fed them a single forkful at a time. The kids obediently opened their mouths and chewed as they watched the same cartoon on separate iPads, their eyes glassy and unblinking. Andrea thought of cows endlessly chewing cud in a blisteringly hot grassy pasture. She looked back at her menu. “I’m thinking the seafood salad, then the catch of the day.” She rested her menu on the table and took a sip of water.

Tim nodded. “Sounds good,” he agreed. “Maybe I’ll get both the pasta and the filet. I’m sure you’ll take a bite of something.”

Andrea smiled at him. “Yeah, maybe.”

When they first met 25 years ago, she definitely would have taken a bite. She would have taken two. She had an appetite then. Their love came on quickly, a sunshower that squalled through and blissfully left a double rainbow in its wake. It was magical, the way they seemed to fit together. Their passion was something Andrea had never experienced before. They found themselves reaching for each other incessantly, even in the midst of a dead sleep. They traveled, enjoyed new restaurants, went to concerts. They were engaged after 2 years of coupledom, and were married after 3. Nathaniel arrived after 4, and by then they had settled into a domestic rhythm, less excited by each other’s presence but still one another’s comfort zones.

As Nathaniel grew, it felt to Andrea that she and Tim were moving away from being co-explorers, and becoming more like co-astronauts. They were trying to negotiate a space shuttle back to Earth, or at least get Nathaniel off to college. They divvied up all the necessary tasks: empty the dishwasher, change the cat litter, take Nathaniel to and from all the activities. Every few months, Andrea reminded herself that she should probably tend to her marriage like it was a houseplant: feed it, water it, give it sunlight. But she had been the primary breadwinner and the primary parent, and with the seemingly infinite number of household and child-related needs, she watched her marriage, once lush and verdant, shrivel into a brittle browned husk.

They gave the server their respective orders (Andrea relieved when Tim decided to skip the pasta) and ordered drinks as well, a club soda for Andrea and a Manhattan for Tim. As they waited for their drinks, Andrea noticed the goateed guard sitting at the restaurant’s bar. He was wearing a light blue button-down shirt and khakis, and Andrea suspected he was off duty. He was reading a paperback, a Coke sweating near his right hand. His downcast eyes communicated a thirst and intensity that Andrea recognized from her youth.

Tim’s phone, which was sitting face-up on the table, buzzed and lit up, and he glanced at it with disdain. “Oh, jeez,” he exhaled. “I better take this.” He answered the call and stood, walking towards the pool. Andrea watched him slip out of sight, and he disappeared among the dark silhouette of the swaying palm trees. The server appeared with their drinks and elegantly placed them on sage green paper coasters. Andrea sipped her club soda and glanced at the bar. The goateed guard was staring at her intently. She swallowed and met his gaze. He smiled shyly, and she was stunned for a moment. Was he flirting with her? She couldn’t recall the last time anyone, man or woman, had made her feel desired. She looked away, then back. He was chatting with the bartender, but they soon made eye contact. Andrea then watched him shift over on his barstool and stand, leaving some cash on the bar. Her eyes widened and her mind froze when he strode over to her table and left a keycard labeled 529.

“If you want to chat later,” he murmured in an undetectable European accent. Up close, his mocha eyes seemed to possess all the secrets of the universe. The corners of her mouth turned up into the slightest smile as she stood on the cliff and admired the expanse of the horizon, daring herself to jump.