The Last Supper at Solstice

The restaurant was painted an aggressive orange that Marion had once called "sunset energy" but now felt more like warning flares. She watched Bernard pick at his papaya with surgical precision, the fork's tines reflecting candlelight as they descended again and again into the fruit's black-seeded heart.

"Have you decided?" he asked, not looking up.

"About what?"

"The apartment. The cat. Everything."

Marion's gaze drifted to the goldfish bowl on the counter behind him—three fish swimming in endless circles, their mouths opening and closing in silent screams. She felt like them lately: suspended in fluid, going nowhere fast, oxygen running thin.

"Bernard," she said, "your sister called again. About the money."

"What about it?"

"She thinks you should take the bull by the horns. That's what she said. Like it's rodeo day at the emotional stockyard."

He laughed, a dry, papery sound. "Elena thinks everything can be solved with metaphorical livestock. What did you tell her?"

"That we'd talk tonight."

They had talked. For six years they had talked. They had talked through his mother's funeral, her miscarriage, the promotion he didn't get, the affair she almost had with the man who painted watercolors in the park on Sundays. They had talked until their throats were raw and their words had lost all meaning, just shapes and sounds filling the space between them.

The waiter arrived with their entrées. Bernard ordered another scotch.

"Remember that goldfish we won at the fair?" he asked suddenly. "The one that died in three days?"

"Vaguely."

"I think about that sometimes. How it lived its whole life in a plastic bag, then died when we gave it something better. Some creatures aren't meant for upgrades."

"Is that what this is? You're the goldfish?"

"I'm saying maybe I was never meant for this." He gestured vaguely at the orange walls, the papaya, the cloth napkin folded precisely by his plate. "Any of this."

Marion felt something shift inside her—some tectonic plate of expectation finally settling. For years she had waited for him to choose something, anything. Now he was choosing not to choose.

"So what happens to the apartment?"

"You keep it. It should have always been yours anyway."

"And the cat?"

"He's your cat. He always has been."

"The money?"

"Give it to Elena. She can buy some bull."

Bernard smiled, genuine for the first time all evening. "Marion?"

"Yes?"

"You should have taken that watercolorist up on his offer. The one in the park."

"I know."

Outside, the real sunset painted the sky in shades that made the restaurant's orange walls look cheap by comparison. Marion finished her papaya in three bites, tasted the sweet, strange fruit of freedom, and signaled for the check.