The Weight of Water

The office goldfish had been floating upside down for three days before anyone mentioned it. Sarah watched its orange belly press against the glass of the reception tank, a tiny martyr in a six-foot prison of fluorescent-lit water.

"You going to do something about that?" Marcus asked, leaning against her desk. His breath smelled of stale coffee and the mints he chewed to hide it. "Or are we just letting Nemo go full zombie mode?"

Sarah swiveled her chair toward him. At forty-two, Marcus still dressed like he might be called to an impromptu skateboard session, though his thinning hair told another story entirely. "It's not my fish, Marcus. It's technically HR's jurisdiction. Much like your persistent questions about my weekend plans."

He laughed, but his eyes didn't. They were bloodshot, and Sarah realized suddenly how tired he looked. They all did.

The merger announcement had landed that morning like a bomb. Three departments dissolved. Two floors of desks becoming vacant, as if the occupants had simply ceased to exist. Sarah had survived — this time — but the air felt thinner somehow, harder to pull into her lungs. She'd borne down through four rounds of layoffs in six years. Each time, she emerged a little harder, a little less inclined to believe in speeches about "family" and "weathering storms together."

Her phone buzzed. A text from David: *Can you pick up wine? Need to talk.*

David's texts were usually brief and functional: *Dinner at 7?* or *Running late.* The word *talk* carried weight. It was the language of marriage counselors and breakup conversations, of thresholds crossed and not uncrossed.

"Everything okay?" Marcus asked, surprisingly perceptive for once.

"Fine." She stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the carpet. "Just need some water."

The break room was empty. As she filled her glass, she watched the water spin, creating a tiny vortex. Her mother's voice echoed in her head: *Water holds memory, Sarah. That's why the ocean remembers every tear.* Weird, mystical nonsense from a woman who'd left when Sarah was seven.

Her hands trembled slightly. The company's glass-walled conference rooms stretched out before her, each containing humans pretending to care about quarterly projections while their lives quietly slipped away. She thought about David at home, probably sitting in their armchair, maybe already three drinks in. She thought about the goldfish, how it had simply stopped swimming one day and let the current take it.

Sarah pressed her palms against the cool counter and closed her eyes. Somewhere beneath all this — the mergers and marriages and mortgages and masks they all wore — there was a woman who'd once wanted to be a marine biologist. Who'd once believed she could stay afloat forever.

She drank the water in one swallow, cold and clean and terrifyingly neutral. Then she returned to her desk, sat down, and typed: *Red or white?*