Swimming with the Bull

Elena stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, noticing the first silver strand of hair at her temple. At forty-seven, she supposed she should be grateful it had taken this long. Another decade at Sterling & Hirsch, and she'd be completely gray—if the stress didn't kill her first.

The office goldfish, a rather listless comet she'd privately christened Augustus, floated near the glass wall of his tank as she passed. She'd bought him on impulse three years ago after her divorce, needing something alive in her apartment that wouldn't ask her why she was still single, or why she hadn't made partner yet, or why she seemed to be drifting through life like something suspended in formaldehyde.

"Elena," Richard's voice boomed from his office door. "The Jensen account. We need to discuss your approach."

Richard was a bull of a man—towering, loud, seemingly incapable of navigating a conversation without trampling someone's boundaries. He'd been promoted over her last year despite her fifteen years of seniority. He called it "merit." She called it something that required three drinks to articulate properly.

"Actually," Elena said, surprised by her own voice, "I've handled the Jensen account for seven years. I don't think we need to discuss my approach."

Richard blinked. The silence stretched.

She could feel it then—the way her whole life had been a series of carefully managed silences, of not saying things, of accepting less than she deserved because at least it was safe. She thought about Augustus in his tiny tank, swimming the same circles, day after day, and something in her cracked open.

"In fact," she continued, her heart hammering, "I don't think I need to be here for this meeting at all."

She walked out, past Richard's stunned expression, past the goldfish swimming his endless loop, and didn't look back.