The Goldfish at the Bottom of the Pool

The office betting pool had reached forty-seven thousand dollars by the time Elena discovered who'd been stealing her lunch.

She'd been swimming through corporate bureaucracy for seven years, barely keeping her head above water. The goldfish in the breakroom aquarium—Ricardo, someone had named him—circled his fifty-gallon prison in endless loops, his orange scales flashing like warning lights against the fluorescent hum. Elena had taken to feeding him through the slats of the vent when the office manager wasn't looking.

"Three months," Marcus said, leaning against her cubicle wall. He was the new VP of Operations, thirty-five and dangerously competent. "That's how long most people last before they start stealing yogurt."

Elena didn't look up from her spreadsheet. "I'm not most people."

"No," he said, his voice dropping to something private. "You're the one feeding the fish."

The pool—this sprawling, endless sea of layoffs and restructuring—had claimed three of her friends that month. Elena had stopped going to happy hours. She'd started keeping a bottle of vodka in her desk drawer, disguised as vanilla extract. Ricardo the goldfish had become her only confidant.

"The restructuring announcements come Friday," Marcus said.

"I know."

"There's a betting pool on who survives."

She finally looked at him. His eyes were the color of water at the bottom of a deep pool. "And?"

"I didn't bet on you." He stepped closer, his hand brushing her shoulder. "I couldn't."

The elevator dinged. Someone called Marcus's name. He hesitated, then walked away, leaving her with the phantom pressure of his touch and the terrible weight of everything unspoken between them.

That night, Elena dreamed she was swimming through the office, but the hallways had filled with water. Her coworkers floated past in their business casual, their lungs full of air, their eyes open and unseeing. She found Marcus at the bottom, still breathing, still waiting, and when she kissed him, she couldn't tell if she was drowning or finally learning to breathe.

Friday morning, she returned to a cubicle that had been stripped clean. Her nameplate was gone. Ricardo's tank sat empty, a single fish scale shimmering on the glass like a tiny orange tear.

She found Marcus by the elevators, a box in his arms.

"They got us both," she said.

"Not both." He set down the box. "I turned in my resignation yesterday."

Her stomach dropped. "You—what?"

"I'm starting my own company." Something flickered across his face, hope and terror warring. "I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me. But then they fired you first, and I thought—"

"You thought I'd say no?" A laugh escaped her, sharp and surprised. "I was going to steal the fish."

Marcus stared at her for a beat, and then he was laughing too, right there in the lobby, while security watched and the elevator chimed and somewhere in the distance, a phone rang unanswered.

"I've got a pool," he said when they could breathe again. "Heated. No cubicles. And room for a very large fish tank."

Elena thought about the life she'd been swimming in circles, about the way she'd been holding her breath for seven years without realizing it. She thought about Ricardo and his endless loops, and how sometimes you have to be caught to finally understand what freedom means.

"Only," she said, "if we never call him Ricardo again."