The Last Day

The goldfish in the reception area had been dead for three days before anyone noticed. That's what finally did it—the absolute indifference of it all. Elena stood there in her blazer that cost more than her first car, watching the floating orange shape through the glass, and realized she was the goldfish. Swimming in circles, waiting to be fed, or not.

"Ms. Chen? Mr. Sterling is ready for the bull session."

The phrase. She'd always hated it. The way the men in her office spoke about meetings with investors—like they were matadors facing down some beast, when really they were just sitting in air-conditioned rooms deciding which workers to sacrifice this quarter.

Sterling didn't look up when she entered. Papers covered his desk like fallen leaves, and his computer displayed the quarterly projections in angry red. "The numbers are disappointing, Elena. The board's concerned."

She should have cared. Should have felt that familiar tighten in her chest, the fear that had driven her through twelve-hour days for six years. Instead she thought about papayas—how her mother used to cut them on Sundays, the way the juice ran down wrists like golden honey, how the black seeds looked like tiny galaxies suspended in sweet flesh. She hadn't eaten a papaya in a decade. Hadn't eaten a Sunday meal with her mother in almost that long.

"Elena? Are you listening?"

She was. She was listening to the hum of the ventilation system, the distant ring of phones, the relentless churn of a machine that would consume her ambition and spit out nothing but money she had no time to enjoy. The market bull would charge, the market bull would retreat. She would dodge or be trampled.

"I'm done," she said.

Sterling laughed, short and sharp. "Pardon?"

"I'm done waiting for someone to notice I'm drowning."

She walked out. Past the dead goldfish, past the receptionist who'd finally noticed, past the glass doors that had separated her from everything real. She caught a flight to Honolulu that evening, where she bought a papaya from a street vendor. The juice ran down her wrist exactly as she remembered, and she wept, not from regret, but from the sudden overwhelming sweetness of being alive.