The Last Inning

The goldfish had stopped swimming. Maya had won it at a carnival—some ridiculous rigged game where you toss rings onto bottlenecks. That was three years ago, when they still went to carnivals, when they still did things together. Now the fish floated at an angle, its orange scales catching the afternoon light through the kitchen window. It had outlived the marriage by three weeks.

Elena had left him for a man she'd met at work. Someone in procurement. The kind of man who probably organized his sock drawer by color and never forgot an anniversary. Someone who didn't spend Sunday afternoons on the couch, eyes glazed over, watching baseball games he couldn't even remember by the third inning.

David found himself running at 2 AM. Not from anything specific, but from the quiet. The apartment was too large for one person, too full of things she'd chosen—throw pillows that matched nothing, the vase she'd bought in Prague, the way she arranged the books by height instead of genre. His sneakers hit the pavement in a rhythm that felt almost like punishment. His breath came hard in the cold air. Running until his legs burned, until his mind went blank, until he was too exhausted to remember how she took her coffee or the sound of her key in the lock.

She'd never know he knew. That was the part that made it worse. He'd become something pathetic—a spy in his own marriage, checking her phone when she showered, scrolling through Instagram to see where she'd checked in, noting the new restaurant downtown, the wine bar, the hotel with the rooftop pool. The detective work of a man whose dignity had already packed its bags.

The baseball game was on again. Some team against some other team. The crowd roared from the television, and David sat on the couch he'd insisted on buying despite her protests, holding the dead fish in a plastic bag. He'd flush it later. For now, he watched the batter step up to the plate, the way the pitcher wound up, the sudden crack of the bat connecting. A home run. The crowd went wild.

"Huh," David said to the empty room. The fish floated sideways in its bag. "You never know what's coming until it does."