The Last Day of August

You walk through the office like a zombie—not the Hollywood kind with flesh hanging off, but the corporate variety: eyes glazed, spirit hollowed out by three years of meaningless spreadsheets and meetings that could have been emails. Today is your last day, though nobody here knows it yet. You cleared out your desk yesterday, one paperclip at a time, so when you finally tell them, it won't look like defeat. It will look like liberation.

In the breakroom, the office goldfish—his name is literally Goldfish, because creativity died here long before you arrived—swims in endless circles around his bowl. You've sometimes envied him. Three seconds of memory, then everything new again. No recollection of the time you cried in the supply closet after that client presentation went sideways. No memory of the Christmas party where your boss made that joke about your dress. Just swimming, eating, swimming. Clean slate, four times a minute.

"You're still here?" It's Sarah from accounting, leaning against the doorframe like she has something important to say but doesn't quite know what. You've had a thing for eight months—purely physical, purely secret, purely doomed. She's married. You're leaving. The math does itself.

"Last round," you say, gesturing to the coffee machine like it's something sacred.

She doesn't move. "I saw a fox this morning. In the garden behind building C. Just standing there, watching me."

This is how she says goodbye. Not directly. Never directly. Some metaphor about wild things and leaving and the unfairness of timing.

"They're clever," you say. "Foxes. They know when to cut their losses."

"Is that what you're doing?" Her voice cracks, just a little. "Cutting your losses?"

You want to tell her about the novel you're going to write. The small apartment in Portland you've already put down a deposit on. The way you've felt dead inside for years, walking through days that blur together like watercolor in rain. You want to say her name the way you whisper it when she sleeps over, which hasn't happened nearly enough.

Instead you pour your coffee and watch Goldfish complete another circuit, forgetting everything, starting fresh, lucky bastard.

"I'm going to be somebody else," you say finally. "Somebody who remembers."

Sarah nods once, like she understands, and you wonder if she'll leave her husband now that you're leaving. Probably not. People rarely do. They just keep swimming in circles, forgetting why they stayed in the first place.

You finish your coffee. It's terrible. Everything here is terrible. And tomorrow, for the first time in three years, you won't be back.