Metabolic Maintenance

The pills were organized by size and color, a pharmacopoeia of desperation arranged in a seven-day compartmentalized case. Mark swallowed them with water every morning at 7:03 AM exactly. Vitamin D for his bones, magnesium for his heart, B-complex for energy he never seemed to have. His devotion to supplementation had begun three years ago, after his father's heart attack, and had metastasized into a religion of prevention.

I watched him from the doorway, hotel coffee in hand, sunlight filtering through the sheer curtains of yet another rental apartment in another city where I'd followed him for his career. We were forty-one and forty-three respectively, and some mornings I couldn't remember if we were happy or just efficient.

"You're staring," Mark said, not looking up from his pill case.

"I'm observing. There's a difference."

He finally met my eyes. "I'm doing this for us. For our future. I want to be around for a long time."

"Do you?" The question slipped out before I could catch it.

On the kitchen counter sat the goldfish in its bowl—a drunken impulse purchase from a carnival two months into our marriage, twelve years ago. It should have died a dozen times over. Its name was Steve. We'd forgotten to feed it for weeks during our first anniversary fight. It survived the Great Chicago Freeze of 2018 when the furnace died. It kept swimming, oblivious, beautiful in its persistence, and I hated it a little for outlasting everything else we used to feel.

Mark washed his vitamin down with orange juice—pulp-free, fortified with extra calcium. The morning light caught the glass, turning the liquid into something sacramental. Orange had been the color of the dress I wore when we met, burnt and vibrant and impossible to look away from. Now it was just juice in a box.

"What did you ask me?" he said softly.

"Nothing. Never mind."

He crossed to where I stood, wrapped his arms around me. His vitamins were dissolving in his stomach, doing whatever work they did to keep him alive, keep us together. I could smell the citrus on his breath, sharp and clean.

"I love you," he said into my hair. It was true. That was the problem—it was true and it wasn't enough anymore.

Steve the goldfish swam to the front of his bowl, mouth opening and closing in silent repetition, forever hungry, forever swimming in the same small circle. I pressed my face into Mark's shoulder and thought: we're all just waiting for something that never comes, but at least the fish doesn't know it.

"I love you too," I said, and I was surprised to find that I meant it, even as I felt us both slowly dissolving like a vitamin in the gut of something we couldn't name.