The Goldfish on the Mound

Elena adjusted the branded **hat**—stiff, still smelling of plastic packaging—and stepped toward the pitcher's mound. The corporate softball game. Dave from accounting had organized it, something about 'team building' and 'synergy.' She hadn't played **baseball** since high school, hadn't wanted to play then either.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Another missed call from her mother. Three weeks since the diagnosis. 'Early onset,' the doctor had said, as if there were a late, convenient kind.

She wound up and threw. The ball sailed high, nowhere near the strike zone. Someone in the outfield laughed—good-natured, she thought, or maybe not. It didn't matter.

After the game, back at her cubicle, she stared at the small bowl on her desk. Her **goldfish**, Leonard, swam in endless circles. She'd won him at a carnival three years ago, a drunk dare from a failed date. Now he was her longest relationship.

'You're looking at a fish like it holds the answers to the universe.'

She jumped. Marco from IT leaned against her partition, holding two lukewarm beers.

'Maybe he does,' she said.

'Mind if I?' He gestured to the empty chair beside her.

They sat there as the office emptied—security guards turning off lights floor by floor. Marco told her about his divorce, how he'd spent months walking through his life like a **zombie**, going through motions without feeling anything. 'Then one day I woke up and realized I could still be surprised,' he said. 'By nothing, sometimes. But that's something.'

Elena thought about her mother, forgetting names, forgetting faces, forgetting herself. Thought about Leonard, swimming his circles, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow. Thought about her own circles—home, work, home, work.

'Can I tell you something?' she asked.

'Always.' He set down his beer, regarded her with such gentle attention she felt something crack open in her chest.

She told him everything. The diagnosis. The fear. The way she'd caught herself staring at her own hands that morning, wondering whose they were.

Marco didn't offer solutions. He didn't say it would be okay. He just said, 'That sounds incredibly lonely. You don't have to do lonely alone.'

Leonell swam to the surface of his bowl, mouth opening and closing in silent bubbles.

'Want to get dinner?' Elena asked. 'Not here. Somewhere else.'

'Somewhere else,' Marco agreed. 'Somewhere entirely.'

She took off the hat and set it on her desk. It felt like leaving something behind, or maybe finally picking something up.