Three Seconds

The apartment was too quiet after Marcus left. Elena found herself staring at the goldfish bowl on the windowsill, watching Barry—his name was Barry, though Marcus had always called it 'that orange thing'—swim in endless circles. She wondered if fish experienced loneliness, or if their three-second memory span was actually a mercy.

'Three seconds,' she whispered to the empty room. 'Must be nice.' Her fingers grazed her hair, which she'd dyed blonde last week in some misguided attempt to reinvent herself. Now the dark roots were already showing through, like truth refusing to stay buried.

At the bodega, the papaya display caught her eye—bright orange, tropical, aggressively cheerful. She bought one, along with a bottle of wine she knew she'd regret. The cashier, a woman with kind eyes and silver hair pulled back in a severe bun, asked if she was celebrating something.

'Celebrating the end of everything,' Elena wanted to say. Instead: 'My birthday.' It wasn't a total lie; she'd turned 34 three days ago, alone in bed while Marcus packed his boxes.

Back in the apartment, she sliced the papaya. Its flesh was the same orange as Barry, same orange as the hair she'd been trying to hide. The taste was sweet and faintly musky, nothing like she expected. Outside her window, a cat appeared on the fire escape, staring in with yellow eyes that seemed to know everything.

'You too?' Elena pressed her hand to the glass. The cat's hair was matted in places, its ear notched from some street fight. It looked like it had seen better days, like it understood the particular art of survival.

She spent the night on the floor, feeding Barry pieces of papaya. He ate greedily, swimming to the surface again and again, each time surprised by the offering. No memory, just hunger, just the endless possibility of food appearing from nowhere.

'Maybe you're the lucky one,' she told him. 'Every three seconds, it's all new. You never have to remember who left, or what you lost, or the sound of a door closing for the last time.'

When she woke at dawn, the cat was still on the fire escape, asleep. Barry was alive, swimming his circles, perpetually surprised by his own existence. Elena's hair looked terrible in the mirror, dark roots and blonde ends like some painful diagram of who she used to be.

She opened the window. The cat slipped inside, wound around her legs, purred like it had always belonged there. Elena broke the last piece of papaya in half, gave one to Barry, ate the other herself.

'Three seconds,' she said again. 'Then it's all new again.' Outside, the city was waking up, endless and possible, and for the first time in weeks, she didn't wish she could remember less.