The Art of Floating

The goldfish circled his bowl, endlessly tracing the same path through neon-lit water. Elena watched him from the kitchen counter, chopping spinach with rhythmic, aggressive precision. The knife against the cutting board was the only sound in the apartment.

'He's not coming back,' Sarah said from the doorway, her voice flat. She wasn't asking.

Elena didn't turn. 'I know.' The spinach would go into a salad nobody would eat. It had seemed like a good idea at the grocery store—healthy, intentional, like everything else she'd tried to make of their life together.

Three years together, dissolved in a five-minute conversation. Marcus had packed while she was at work. Left his keys on the table, his half of the rent unpaid, and the goldfish—Bubbles, absurdly named in a moment of drunken affection—that he'd won at a carnival their first summer.

'You should just flush it,' Sarah said. 'The fish.'

Elena finally looked at her friend. Sarah's palm was pressed against the doorframe, leaving a faint mark on the paint. She'd driven over at midnight with a bottle of wine and terrible advice.

'He's alive, Sarah.' Elena pushed the spinach aside. 'Marcus might be a coward who leaves without a goodbye, but I'm not going to murder his pet by proxy.' She laughed, a harsh sound. 'That's his job, apparently.'

Sarah crossed the room and wrapped her arms around Elena's shoulders. 'You're too good for him anyway.' She paused. 'And that fish is probably immortal. They always outlive their owners' mistakes.'

Elena watched the goldfish pause, then turn back along his endless circuit. She thought about Marcus's palm against hers in movie theaters, in bed, across restaurant tables. The way he'd looked at her that night at the carnival, like she was someone worth winning something for.

'I don't want to be alone,' she said, the truth finally coming out.

'You're not.' Sarah squeezed tighter. 'And you've got me, you've got that stupid fish, and you've got tomorrow.' She gestured at the abandoned salad. 'We'll make margaritas. We'll put the spinach in something else. We'll figure it out.'

The goldfish surfaced, gulped at the water's edge, then descended again. Alive, anyway. That had to count for something.