What the Goldfish Knows

The goldfish in the lobby had been circling its bowl for three years, longer than Elena's marriage had lasted. She passed it every morning, its orange scales flashing in the brutal overhead lighting, and wondered: did it remember yesterday? Did it remember her?

'You look like you haven't slept,' said Julian, leaning against her desk. He was thirty-two to her forty-seven, all sharp angles and easy charm, the kind of man who called women 'sweetheart' and thought it was endearing. Elena had slept with him twice now, in the supply closet after the holiday party, then in his Mercedes overlooking the city.

'My dog is dying,' she said, though she wouldn't tell him the dog's name. Some things you kept.

Julian's face arranged itself into something like concern. 'That's rough. My ex-wife got the dog in the divorce. Some kind of terrier.' His hand brushed hers—his palm warm, his fingers slender—and Elena felt that familiar flutter, that stupid, humiliating hope.

The layoffs were scheduled for Friday. Everyone knew. The goldfish kept swimming. Julian stopped by Elena's desk three times that day, each time with some excuse, each time lingering too close, his arm brushing her shoulder, his breath warm against her ear. He was like a fox in the henhouse, she thought, and she was the one who'd left the door unlatched.

That night, her dog—a golden retriever named Martha who'd been with her through her husband's departure and her mother's death—didn't get up to greet her. Elena sank to the kitchen floor and buried her face in Martha's soft fur, smelling the dog smell that had permeated her life for twelve years.

Her phone buzzed. Julian: *Can I come over?*

She looked at Martha's labored breathing, the way the dog's eyes followed her with that terrible, complete trust. She thought about Julian's palm against hers, his easy charm, the way he'd looked at her in the supply closet like she was both everything and nothing. She thought about the goldfish, circling and circling, perhaps knowing something they didn't.

Elena deleted the text. She called the vet. She curled around Martha on the kitchen floor and waited for dawn, the dog's steady heartbeat against her chest, and somewhere beyond the windows, the palm trees swaying in the dark, indifferent and beautiful.