What the Goldfish Knows

The goldfish had been watching them for three years. Its name was absurd, something they'd laughed about when they first moved in together—Bubbles, Goldie, something cute and meaningless. Now it just floated near the glass, mouth opening and closing in silent judgment.

"You took the last orange," Elena said, not looking up from her coffee. The accusation hung in the space between them, heavier than it should have been.

Marcus sighed, the vitamin C tablet in his hand catching the morning light. "It's just an orange, Elena."

"It's not just an orange. It's that you didn't ask. It's that you didn't notice I'd left it there for myself."

He swallowed the vitamin without water. She watched his throat work, the same throat she'd kissed countless times, now something she couldn't remember wanting to touch. When had that happened?

"You're doing it again," Marcus said. "Finding meaning in things that don't have any."

"Maybe meaning is what you make of it."

"Maybe you're exhausted and maybe I'm exhausted and maybe this isn't working anymore."

The words hit the air like stones in water. Elena looked at him really looked at him. The lines around his eyes had deepened. His palm, resting on the table, showed new veins, new age. They were thirty-four and fifty at the same time.

She reached across the table, her palm covering his. The contact felt foreign, electric, devastating.

"Remember when we bought the fish?" she whispered.

"We were drunk," he said, but his thumb stroked her wrist.

"We were happy."

The goldfish turned in its bowl, catching a shaft of sunlight that transformed its scales into something miraculous, fleeting. They watched it together, sharing something that was almost tenderness, almost love, almost enough.

"Take the orange next time too," she said. "I don't care about the orange."

"Then what do you care about?"

She squeezed his hand and let go. "I'll let you know when I figure it out."

The goldfish swam on, knowing everything and nothing, bearing witness to the way love dies not with fireworks but with fruit and vitamins and the quiet erosion of small kindnesses, the way something vital can float right in front of you, glistening and alive, while you learn to stop seeing it at all.