The Glass Bowl

The goldfish had been alive for three years, which felt like some kind of achievement, though Mara wasn't sure what exactly she'd achieved. It swam in lazy circles around its bowl on her desk, its orange scales catching the fluorescent lights of the forty-third floor.

"You still have that thing?" Richard asked, leaning against her doorframe. He was wearing the suit he'd bought after his promotion—same pyramid scheme, different floor.

"His name's Harold," Mara said, without looking up from the quarterly report.

"Right. Harold." Richard stepped into her office. "There's a game tonight."

She finally looked at him. The baseball tickets were in his hand—season tickets he'd bought when they were still married, back when Friday nights meant beer and hot dogs and shouting themselves hoarse. Back when they believed if they just kept climbing, they'd eventually reach whatever sat at the top of this corporate pyramid they'd both volunteered to build their lives on.

"I can't," she said. "I have to finish the projection analysis."

"Mara." His voice softened. "It's the playoffs. Your dad's old team."

Her father had died five years ago, his last coherent thought a complaint about how baseball players these days couldn't bunt. He'd spent forty years in a factory he hated, building other people's dreams while his own gathered dust in boxes in the garage. The goldfish Harold had been his anniversary present to her mother—the year before she left.

"I really can't, Richard."

He set the tickets on her desk. "In case you change your mind."

After he left, Mara watched Harold swim his endless circles. She thought about pyramids—how they were really just elaborate tombs, how the workers who built them were buried in the sand beside them. She thought about baseball—how her father had loved it because in nine innings, anything could happen. How the worst team could beat the best team on any given Sunday.

She stood up, grabbed her coat, and took the tickets.

The stadium was crowded, loud, alive. Richard waved from his seat, already holding a beer. She sat beside him and they watched in comfortable silence as the players took their positions under the lights.

"You know," Richard said during the seventh-inning stretch, "I talked to Harold today."

"Harold?"

"The fish. I called your office. The receptionist said he died yesterday."

Mara looked at him, then back at the field. A player hit a home run—the ball arcing up into the lights like something finally breaking free of its orbit.

"I know," she said. "I haven't had the heart to change the water yet."

They watched the ball sail over the fence, and for a moment, it seemed like anything was still possible.