Three Strikes and a Fish

The baseball game was a blur on the television above the bar—another Yankees loss, another inning slipping away—much like the time before Mark's flight departed. Sarah's phone buzzed on the table between them. Third time in twenty minutes.

"You should answer that," Mark said, his whiskey glass sweating rings onto the coaster. "He's wondering where you are."

"Richard doesn't wonder anything about me anymore." She watched the bartender pop the cap off another beer. "He assumes. That's what our marriage is now—a series of comfortable assumptions and separate bedrooms."

Mark nodded. They'd been doing this for six months—these stolen hours between meetings, flights, excuses. He was running on caffeine and guilt; she was running on spite and something that felt like love but probably wasn't.

"Remember that goldfish we won at the fair?" she asked suddenly. "Last September, before everything."

"Bubbles."

"He died last week." She traced the rim of her glass. "Richard flushed him without telling me. Just gone. Eight years of feeding him, watching him swim in endless circles, and one day he's gone and Richard can't even be bothered to mention it until three days later when I noticed the empty bowl."

Mark signaled for another round. He'd been running from his own empty apartment for months. Sarah's dysfunction felt like home.

"The baseball player analogy is cliché, isn't it?" she continued. "Three strikes and you're out. But we keep swinging."

"Fourth inning. They've got until the ninth."

"And then?"

"Then they go home. Separate homes. Separate lives." Mark's phone chimed—his boarding announcement. "Just like us."

She didn't respond, just watched the baseball game where nothing would be resolved tonight either. The runner on second base would stay there, trapped between safety and something more dangerous.

"Text me when you land," she said as he slid off the stool, already reaching for his wallet, already running toward the next contradiction.

He didn't look back. Some fishbowls you never escape. Some games you never stop playing, even when you've already lost.