The Goldfish at the Top of the Pyramid

Marcus hadn't been himself since the promotion. Elena found him in his corner office on the thirty-seventh floor, the city splayed beneath them like a glittering offer he'd already accepted and come to regret. His iPhone lay face-up on the mahogany desk, its screen lighting up every thirty seconds with emails he no longer bothered to answer. Somewhere below them, the corporate pyramid broadened—thousands of people reporting to people who reported to people who reported, ultimately, to the man sitting before her, staring blankly at nothing.

"You haven't called," she said, not quite an accusation.

"Time disappeared," Marcus murmured. "One day I had it, the next I didn't."

He looked like a zombie—not the undead kind from movies, but the living kind she saw on the subway every morning: bodies moving through motions, eyes fixed on middle distances, souls elsewhere entirely. His suit cost more than her car. His skin had the grayish cast of someone who hadn't seen sunlight except through glass.

"Remember when we talked about starting that restaurant?" Elena asked softly.

Marcus's wife had left him six months ago. She couldn't compete with something that required his presence but offered nothing back. Now his penthouse was empty except for a goldfish she'd left behind—a mournful, orange thing swimming endless circles in its bowl. Marcus had confessed once that he envied it. The goldfish believed every revolution around its glass prison was a new journey. Its three-second memory meant it never knew it was trapped.

"I wish I could be like that," he'd told her over drinks that weren't helping. "To forget. To think every time around the bowl is the first time."

His iPhone chimed. 9:14 PM. A meeting reminder. Tuesday. He rubbed his temples.

"I'm forty years old, El. I spent two decades climbing to the top of a pyramid I didn't even realize I was building. And now that I'm here..." He gestured at the view, at the city, at everything he'd won. "I don't remember what I wanted it for."

"Come back," she said simply.

"I can't. There are people depending on me."

"The goldfish is depending on you."

Marcus laughed—really laughed, for the first time in months. "What?"

"The fish. Marcus Jr. Remember? You named it after yourself because it kept forgetting who it was. But you're the one who's forgotten."

He looked at her then, really looked at her, and she saw something flicker behind his eyes. Not recognition yet. But something. The smallest beginning of not being gone anymore.

His iPhone chimed again. 9:16 PM. He turned it face-down without glancing at the screen.