The Goldfish in the Cable Room

Six years of spooling coaxial cable through suburban attics had turned Arthur into something resembling a zombie. He moved through installations with the hollow efficiency of automation, his body present while his mind drifted elsewhere—usually to the goldfish bowl on his kitchen counter, the one living thing that still seemed to need him.

The corporate spy arrived three months ago: a sleek junior executive named Elena who asked too many questions about Arthur's installation techniques. His supervisor called it "knowledge transfer." Arthur called it something else. He'd catch her watching him work, making notes on her tablet, her smile too sharp for someone just learning the trade.

"Your dog misses you," his ex-wife's text read. Baxter, the golden retriever she'd left behind when she walked out, was probably asleep on Arthur's couch right now, loyal and waiting. At least the dog still believed in him.

Arthur's breakthrough—his method for routing cable through century-old houses without damaging the plaster—had taken years to perfect. Now Elena was demonstrating "her new technique" to management, earning praise Arthur had been denied for a decade.

The goldfish, whom he'd named Hope despite himself, swam in endless circles around her bowl. Arthur often wondered if she remembered the previous circuit, or if each lap was the first one.

That Tuesday, Arthur found Elena in his truck, her hands wrapped around his field notebook—the one containing every shortcut, every homeowner quirk, every solution he'd developed over six years.

She looked up, guilty as a child caught stealing candy.

"I was just borrowing some notes," she said.

Arthur thought about Hope in her bowl, about Baxter waiting at home, about the way he'd let himself become a zombie while others stole his life away.

"No," he said, closing the truck door behind him. "You weren't."