Electricity in the Water

The third-floor office had a goldfish bowl on every desk — corporate's idea of 'bringing tranquility to the workspace.' Elena's goldfish, named Bob by the temps who came and went, had been floating belly-up since Tuesday morning. She hadn't flushed him yet. Something about his blank, glassy stare felt appropriate.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky in half — a violent white fracture that made the fluorescents flicker. Her phone buzzed. David again. Three missed calls, twelve texts. The last message read: I still have your red hat from the wedding. The expensive one. Do you want it back, or should I donate it?

The hat. She'd spent four hundred dollars on that hat, wore it exactly once, felt sophisticated and untouchable while David's ex-girlfriend watched them from across the reception hall. Now it was probably sitting on some stranger's head, or worse, in a Goodwill bin with a three-dollar price tag.

A stray cat appeared in the alley below her window, orange and skeletal, fighting with another over something unidentifiable. Lightning illuminated the brief violence — bodies tangled, teeth flashing. She couldn't look away. That's what she and David had been, really: two starving animals tearing into each other, calling it love.

Her phone lit up with another text. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought up the hat.

She typed: Keep it. Then deleted it. Typed: Donate it. Deleted that too.

The goldfish caught the last flash of lightning through its glass prison, a momentary shimmer of something that wasn't life but looked like it. She realized suddenly that she was thirty-five years old, single again, communicating with her ex about a hat instead of the three years they'd spent building a life that could be dismantled with boxes and a key exchange.

The cat outside yowled — victory or defeat, she couldn't tell. Elena finally picked up the bowl and walked to the bathroom. As she watched Bob swirl down into the corporate plumbing, she understood what she'd really lost: not the relationship, not the hat, not even the years — but the certainty that any of it had meant something at all.

Her phone buzzed one final time. I loved you, you know. Even when I couldn't stand you.

She typed back: I know. Me too.

Another lightning strike, closer now. The office went completely dark. In the black mirror of her computer screen, Elena could see her own reflection, finally unrecognizable.