The Goldfish on the Cable Box

The cable had been out for three days when Lena stopped eating. Not entirely—she'd pick at the spinach wilting in the crisper drawer, pushing it around her plate like she was still deciding whether to bother. But the meals we used to make together had become something she endured alone, standing at the counter, while I sat on the couch staring at the blank screen where our shows used to be.

"You're being a bull about this," she said finally, not looking up from her phone. I'd forgotten she was even in the room.

"About what?"

"About us. About everything. You just charge ahead and assume I'll follow."

The goldfish floated near the glass of its bowl, its mouth opening and closing in that endless, silent repetition. We'd won it at a carnival two years ago—our first date, after too many beers and a failed attempt at ring toss. We'd named it Lucky because we were clever like that. It had outlasted every expectation, every fight, every "we need to talk." Now it watched us with its unblinking eye, and I wondered if it remembered the people we used to be.

"I called the provider," I said. "They'll send someone Tuesday."

"I wasn't talking about the cable, Marcus."

She set down her phone, and the room went suddenly quiet. The spinach leaves on her plate had gone slimy with neglect, like something that had once been fresh and was now just waiting to be thrown away. I looked at her hands—those hands that had once gripped mine on carnival rides, that had bandaged my knee when I fell off the ladder last spring, that now rested so still on the counter.

"I know," I said.

"Then why won't you talk about it?"

The goldfish rose to the surface, gulping air. I thought about how they say goldfish have three-second memories, how everything is always new to them, how they never have to carry anything forward. How that must feel—to just keep swimming, never drowning in what came before.

"Because," I said, "if we say it out loud, it becomes real. And I'm not ready for real yet."

Lena looked at me for a long moment. Then she went back to her spinach, back to her phone, back to the small denials we'd both agreed to live inside. And somewhere in the apartment, a cable that hadn't worked in days waited to bring us back a world neither of us wanted to face anymore.