Goldfish in the Nile

The goldfish circled its bowl in Room 317, its orange scales catching the morning light that slanted through dusty curtains. Elena watched it, mesmerized, though she couldn't remember checking into this hotel. Her head throbbed with the hollow ache of too much gin and not enough sleep. The papaya on the bedside table had attracted fruit flies - small, persistent reminders that she'd been here three days, hiding from the life that had somehow become unrecognizable. The bull market had made her wealthy. It had also made her hollow. Yesterday's closing bell marked the end of her marriage - Richard's text had been curt: "I know about the affair." But there was no affair, only the quiet erosion of two people who'd stopped swimming in the same direction years ago. Now she was drowning in lies she hadn't told. The Sphinx had been her father's nickname for her - inscrutable, impossible to read. He'd found her cold. She found herself simply exhausted from the performance of being anyone at all. Elena rose, her body heavy with accumulated griefs. Downstairs, the pool beckoned - an impossible turquoise in Egypt's barren landscape. She stepped into the water, fully dressed, and began swimming, not toward anything, but away from the person she could no longer bear to be. The papaya would rot. The goldfish would circle. But somewhere in the deep end, Elena finally broke the surface, gasping, decided to live as something real.