The Goldfish in Her Palm

The goldfish swam in tight circles in its bowl, its orange scales dulling in the fluorescent office light. Sarah watched it while I adjusted the coaxial cable behind her desk, my shirt untucked, grease on my knuckles.

"He's not eating," she said, pressing her palm against the glass. "I bought those expensive vitamins they promised would make him live longer."

I tightened the connection. The cable snapped into place. "Fish don't take vitamins, Sarah."

"You know what I mean." She turned from the fish, her silk blouse catching the light. "I'm trying to keep something alive here."

We'd been sleeping together for three months, meeting in this office after hours where she managed client accounts and I installed their systems. She was married to someone who traveled constantly. I was the friend she'd confided in at office parties, the one who'd listened until listening became something else.

"The cable's fixed," I said, wiping my hands. "You should have signal now."

"Stay."

I stayed. We watched the fish make its endless circles, and she told me about her husband—how he'd stopped asking about her day, how she found herself talking to the fish more than him. She took my hand, placed it against her stomach. I felt her breathing, the rise and fall like tides.

"If I leave him," she whispered, "I lose everything. The house, the life we built."

"And if you stay?"

She pulled away. The goldfish floated to the surface, its gills barely moving.

"I lose myself anyway."

I left that night with her promise that she'd decide. She didn't call. I drove past her house two weeks later and saw her husband's car in the driveway. The for sale sign was gone. I thought about the vitamins she'd bought for a fish that was probably dead by now, how we both believed we could fix something that was never ours to keep.

Some friends you don't speak to again. Some fish you can't save. The cable I installed still works, carrying signals into rooms where people lie to each other, where they believe that buying the right things, taking the right pills, will make everything last forever.