What the Goldfish Knows

The sphinx cat curled on the windowsill, watching Elena with its wrinkled, hairless face as she counted out Marcus's vitamins into the little plastic organizer. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday—each compartment a tiny sarcophagus for their shared future.

"You're doing that thing again," Marcus said from the sofa, not looking up from his phone.

"What thing?"

"Pretending you're not angry."

Elena's hand paused over the B-complex. "I'm not pretending anything."

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, a violent spiderweb of white that illuminated the dust motes dancing in the stale air of their apartment. The sphinx cat shifted, its enormous ears swiveling toward them.

"The goldfish died," she said suddenly.

Marcus finally looked up. "What?"

"The goldfish. It was floating this morning when I went to feed it."

He stood slowly, crossing to the bowl on the bookshelf. The fish lay on top of the water, its orange scales dull in the amber light. "How long did we have it?"

"Three years. Two months, and seventeen days."

"That's weirdly specific."

"I looked it up when I bought him. Goldfish in captivity live five to ten years if you care for them properly." She turned to face him. "What does it say about us that we couldn't keep a fish alive?"

Marcus reached into the bowl, his fingers disturbing the water. The fish bobbed. "It says fish die, Elena. It doesn't mean anything."

"Everything means something."

She watched him, really watched him—his thinning hair, the way his shoulders slumped, the vitamin C deficiency that had sent him to the doctor last month and made her question what else was lacking between them. The sphinx cat jumped from the windowsill, landing softly, and began to weave between Marcus's legs, purring like a small engine.

"The riddle," she said.

"What?"

"The sphinx's riddle. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening."

"You're obsessed with death lately."

"I'm obsessed with how we're living." She gestured around the apartment—the sagging bookshelves, the unwashed dishes in the sink, the three dead plants in the corner that refused to stay alive no matter how much she watered them. "We're not even thirty yet, Marcus. But look at us. Tired all the time. Working jobs that don't matter. Taking vitamins just to feel slightly less like shit. And now we can't even keep a fish alive."

Another lightning strike, closer this time. Thunder rattled the windowpane.

Marcus dropped the dead goldfish into the toilet. "Maybe," he said, flushing, "we're just doing it wrong. Maybe that's not what life is supposed to be."

"What then?"

"I don't know." He looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time in months. "But I don't think the answer is in a fish bowl."

Elena felt something shift inside her, small and electric. The sphinx cat blinked its strange, naked eyes. Outside, the rain began to fall.

"Start over," she said.

"With the fish?"

"With everything."

She crossed to the vitamin organizer and dumped all the pills back into their bottles. The sound was like rain—small, hard things hitting glass. For the first time in years, she didn't feel tired.

"Okay," Marcus said. "Okay."

The sphinx cat yawned, showing teeth like tiny white needles. Somewhere beyond the window, the world was ending and beginning, over and over, in the space between lightning strikes.