Last Call for Lost Things

The goldfish in the tank behind the bar had been swimming in circles for three hours. Its scales were dull, like old copper left in the rain, and I wondered if it knew it was the last one left — if fish could feel the particular loneliness of outlasting everyone else.

"He's leaving me," Sarah said, not looking at me. She traced the condensation on her beer glass with her thumbnail, making patterns that disappeared before they could mean anything.

"I know," I said. "He told me last week."

Her hand froze. "You knew?"

"We're friends, Sarah. He's my friend too."

She laughed, but it was jagged, like something breaking. "That's the problem, isn't it? Everyone's his friend. He collects people the way other men collect baseball cards — rare finds, valuable specimens, all arranged just so in his mind. I was just another acquisition."

I wanted to correct her, but the truth had sharp edges. I reached across the table and took her hand, palm against palm. Her skin was cold. In college, we'd gotten drunk and read each other's palms, predicting lives that looked nothing like the ones we'd actually lived. Your lifeline's too short, she'd said, laughing, and we'd both assumed she meant the alcohol.

"What does it say now?" she asked quietly. "My palm. What do you see?"

I looked at the lines etched into her skin. "I see a woman who's going to be okay."

"You always were a terrible liar."

"It's not lying. It's remembering who you were before him."

She pulled her hand away, ordered another drink. The goldfish did another lap around its tiny kingdom, oblivious to how big the world actually was, or how small it could make you feel.

"You know," she said, "he kept all his baseball cards in our closet. Thousands of dollars worth of cardboard men in plastic sleeves. But he never once took me to a game."

Some things are just for collecting, I thought. Some things are just for looking at.

"Come on," I said. "Let's get out of here."

She hesitated, then nodded. We left the goldfish to its circles, left the bar where we'd both spent too many nights waiting for lives that looked like the ones we'd predicted in the dark, drunk and twenty-two and sure that palmistry was real because we needed it to be.

Outside, the air was cold and honest. "What now?" she asked.

"Now," I said, "we figure out what comes next. Together."