The Goldfish at the End of the Bar

The goldfish swam in lazy circles in its bowl, indifferent to the man dying in the corner booth. Morris watched it through the bottom of his glass, the whiskey turning the fish into a distorted orange ghost. He'd been coming to O'Malley's for six months, sitting in this same booth, staring at that same fish, ever since the accident.

'Still forgetting to take your vitamin D?' Marcy slid into the seat across from him. She smelled like coconut sunscreen and expensive mistakes. 'Dr. Chen says you're going to get rickets if you keep drinking like this.'

Morris signaled for another round. 'I'm forty-seven, Marcy. I don't get rickets. I get cirrhosis.'

'You're forty-six.' She reached across the table, her wedding ring catching the light. 'And you're still wearing that ridiculous hat. Take it off inside, for chrissakes.'

The hat had belonged to his father—a brown fedora that made Morris look like a noir detective from a movie nobody watched anymore. He'd promised himself he'd stop wearing it once the grief faded. But grief, he'd learned, didn't fade. It just learned to swim in deeper water.

'Your husband the bear still in Tahoe?' he asked, not looking at her.

'He's a human being, Morris. And yes, he's watching the kids. I told him I was visiting my mother.' Marcy's voice dropped. 'I came to say goodbye. This—us—it can't keep happening.'

Outside, the siren of an approaching police car cut through the afternoon heat. Morris had called them himself an hour ago, after he'd found the letter in his wife's handwriting, dated three months before she'd stepped in front of that train. The letter described the other man. The bear. The man his wife had been leaving him for.

The man who happened to be married to the woman now sitting across from him.

'I know,' he said, finally looking at her. 'About Sarah and your husband. I found the letters this morning.'

Marcy's face went still. The goldfish swam on, utterly unaware that two marriages and four lives were about to dissolve into the same dark water.