Three Seconds of Air

The goldfish had been dead for three days before Marcus noticed.

It floated sideways in the bowl on his desk, its orange scales catching the fluorescent lights of the open-plan office. Marcus stared at it, the way it hovered suspended in that peculiar goldfish way, and realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen it swim. Maybe it had been dead for weeks. Maybe he had been too.

"You're still here?"

Sarah leaned against his cubicle wall, holding two coffees. She'd left the firm six months ago—said she was tired of running herself into the ground for partners who wouldn't remember her name in a year. Marcus had envied her then. He envied her now.

"Just finishing up," Marcus lied. He gestured to the dead fish. "Company mascot."

She laughed, but it was tired. "Remember the Christmas party? The way Peterson—"

"Don't."

"—the way he grabbed your shoulder and called you a bull in a china shop? Said you'd charge through walls to close a deal?"

Marcus remembered. Peterson had been drunk, his breath smelling of expensive scotch and cheaper decisions. He'd squeezed Marcus's shoulder with those meaty hands and told him that's what it took to make it here. Be a bull. Charge. Don't think about what you're trampling.

That was the night Marcus started running. Not literal running at first—though he'd bought jogging shoes the next week. It was the running you do in your sleep, the running from conversations, from mirrors, from the question that lives in the hollow space behind your breastbone: is this it?

"I'm leaving," Sarah said, pushing a coffee toward him. "Got a job at a nonprofit. Half the pay, double the meaning."

Marcus looked at the goldfish again. Its mouth was open slightly, caught in a silent O. Goldfish have three-second memories, people said. They'd discovered that wasn't true. But what a gift it would be—to circle the same glass walls and forget, to encounter the same plastic castle and feel wonder again and again. Instead of the slow accumulation of recognition: oh, this again. This is my life. This is all there is.

"Marcus?"

He stood up. His legs felt strange, like they belonged to someone else. Someone who'd spent years sitting in ergonomic chairs, crafting emails about synergy while parts of himself atrophied.

"I'm coming with you," he said.

"What?"

"To see your new office. Then maybe for a run. It's been too long."

Marcus left the dead fish floating in its bowl. Let the next person deal with it. He was finally done running in place.