The Flounder

Despite the fact that Marian had told Daniel the night before their trip to France that she had slept with someone at her conference that weekend, that she was sorry, very sorry, and regretted it, and despite the fact that Daniel didn’t feel much like going anywhere with her now, they left early the next morning. It was only their second vacation since relocating to Switzerland more than five months before. They had already rented and paid for the car, and they didn’t—not yet, anyway— have enough money to throw away. And Daniel felt the need now to escape their new country: quiet, orderly, sometimes oppressively so, rich and herzlich. Neither of them slept much that night. The darkness was shallow, and Marian woke several times, apologizing, holding to him, saying she would never do it again. Never. He felt disoriented, waking and sleeping and wondering if, in fact, what Marian had told him was just a dream, something he’d imagined in the gray spaces between sleep and waking.