The Goldfish at the End of the Bar

Marlena hadn't meant to become a corporate spy. It had just happened—one minute she was analyzing market trends, the next she was extracting proprietary data from competitor servers under the pseudonym 'The Analyst.' Now, at 47, she sat in a hotel bar in Austin, watching her goldfish—the only living thing that still looked at her with anything resembling trust—swim in desperate circles in his bowl on the counter.

She'd brought him along because she couldn't bear to leave him alone again. Not after the last time.

Her iPhone vibrated against the polished wood. Marcus—her handler, her lover, her betrayer—was calling. She ignored it, instead wrapping the charging cable around her fingers until the skin turned white.

"You're like a bull in a china shop," he'd told her three weeks ago, after she'd nearly blown their cover by accessing the wrong server. "You charge in without thinking. That's why I love you, and that's why you're dangerous."

Dangerous. She'd thought it was a compliment then. Now she knew it was a warning.

The goldfish, whom she'd absurdly named Buster, pressed his orange mouth against the glass. Bubble. Bubble. She thought about how she'd pressed herself against Marcus, how she'd trusted him with everything—the encryption keys, the account numbers, the passwords to half a dozen shell companies.

He'd sold her out. She'd found the paper trail that morning.

Another call. This time she answered.

"Marlena." His voice was rough, like sandpaper. "We need to talk."

"We're talking."

"Not like this. Not over the phone." He paused. "I heard about Austin. What you found."

"Did you?" She watched a blonde woman in a red dress laugh at something a man said. The woman's happiness was so performative it made Marlena's teeth ache.

"It wasn't personal, Marlena. It was business. You know how it works."

"I know," she said. "I also know you left a trail. A big, stupid, obvious one."

Silence stretched between them like the cable across her hotel room floor.

"What do you want?" he asked, and for the first time, she heard fear.

Marlena looked at Buster the goldfish, swimming his endless circles. She thought about how easily the glass could break. How easily everything could break.

"I want," she said, "to know what it feels like to be the one holding the hammer."