The Goldfish at the End of the Bar

The goldfish had been dead for three days before Marcus finally noticed. It floated at the top of the bowl on the counter of his empty apartment, its orange scales catching the afternoon light that sliced through dusty blinds. Just like his marriage, he thought—something that had been slowly losing oxygen while he'd been too busy to notice.

He was supposed to bear it gracefully. That's what everyone kept saying at the office. 'You're bearing up so well, Marcus.' 'It takes a real man to bear this kind of loss.' The loss in question being his promotion to Elias, the thirty-year-old wunderkind with perfect teeth and a bluetooth permanently attached to his ear. Marcus was fifty-four, his stomach now soft where it used to be hard, his back a constant reminder that gravity would eventually claim everything.

He poured himself a glass of water from the tap, watched it swirl around the dead fish. The water had grown cloudy. He should change it, but instead he found himself moving to the balcony, staring out at the city below. The neighbor's cat—massive, dark, something like a bear in the right light—padded across the fire escape. It paused, looked at him with yellow eyes that seemed to understand everything about disappointment.

'Maybe I'll just keep swimming in circles,' Marcus whispered to no one.

His phone buzzed on the counter. Sarah. He hadn't spoken to his ex-wife in six months, not since she'd told him she was sleeping with her tennis instructor. The man was twenty-seven. Marcus didn't want to know what that said about his competitive advantages in the marketplace of desire.

He let it ring. The goldfish had lived three years. Three years of silent observation, watching Marcus come home alone, drink himself to sleep, wake to the same fluorescent dawn. The fish had born witness to everything.

'Maybe you were the lucky one,' Marcus said, finally reaching in to scoop the tiny body into his hand. 'At least you got to stop swimming.'

He flushed it down the toilet, watching the water spiral away, taking something small but significant with it. Then he poured the rest of the bowl into the sink, watching the cloudy water disappear, and called Sarah back.