Swimming in Glass

The goldfish circled its bowl endlessly, its orange scales catching the fluorescent light from my desk lamp. Leonard had won it at some carnival—the kind where you toss rings onto bottle caps—and gifted it to me with that smug smile that meant he wanted something.

I should have said no. But saying no to Leonard was like trying to stop a baseball game in the ninth inning—you could do it, but everyone would act like you'd betrayed something sacred.

'He needs a name,' Leonard had said, leaning against my cubicle wall while I stared at the spreadsheet that had been my entire morning. 'Something dignified.'

'I'll call him Roger.'

'Roger?' Leonard laughed, but the sound was hollow, like a bat hitting air. 'That's not a fish name.'

'It's my fish name.'

That was three weeks ago. Now Roger swam his circles while I ate lunch alone in the break room, watching the baseball game on the mounted TV, thinking about how papaya tastes like something that should be sweet but isn't quite—like Leonard, like this job, like the way I kept letting people take pieces of me until there wasn't much left to give.

The papaya incident had happened Friday. Leonard brought it in from some farmer's market, claimed it was exotic, sophisticated. He'd sliced it open and the smell filled the entire floor—musky and strange. Everyone pretended to love it. I'd taken one bite and he'd watched me with those expectant eyes, waiting for me to become someone I wasn't.

'It's... interesting,' I'd said.

'Just interesting?' He'd looked wounded. 'I drove two hours for this.'

Now Roger pressed his nose against the glass, his mouth opening and closing in silent bubbles. I realized he was doing the same thing I was—swimming in circles, going nowhere, pretending there was meaning in the repetition. Outside my window, the city carried on while baseball season dragged on, endless as itself.

I reached into the bowl and let Roger swim into my hand. He didn't fight. He knew some cages you just accept.