What the Goldfish Knew

The office pool had been going for six months—seven hundred dollars in cash, stuffed inside an envelope in Marcus's desk drawer. Everyone had picked a date for when Elena would finally snap. Marcus chose Valentine's Day, poetic. Sarah went with the summer solstice. I picked last Tuesday, the day her husband's Corvette appeared in the parking lot with a windshield spiderwebbed like something that had been struck by lightning.

I should have collected. I should have walked to HR and laid down the envelope like evidence. Instead I sat in the breakroom watching Elena's goldfish—she kept it on her desk, a single orange comet in a bowl that was too small, its mouth opening and closing in silent desperation.

"He called me a bulldog," she said, appearing in the doorway. Her eyes were rimmed red. "Said I never let go. Can you believe that?"

The goldfish stirred, fins catching the fluorescent light. I thought about last night, her hand on my thigh in the booth at O'Malley's, her wedding ring clicking against her glass. I thought about the way she'd looked at me, hungry and hollow, and how I'd leaned in instead of away.

"Bullshit," I said.

She laughed, startled and sharp. Then she was crying, really crying, and I was holding her while the goldfish watched from its bowl, swimming in its endless circles. That's when I understood: the fish wasn't desperate. It was waiting. It knew something I didn't.

"The pool," she whispered into my shoulder. "Everyone's betting on when I'll break."

I pulled back and looked at her. Something passed between us—recognition, disappointment, the particular warmth of finally being seen.

"I picked Tuesday," I said. "Yesterday."

Elena wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She walked to her desk, dropped the goldfish into the plastic water cooler jug she used for aquarium changes, and headed for the elevator without another word.

The fish swam toward the surface, once and always free.