What the Goldfish Remember

The goldfish forgot every three seconds. Marcus envied them.

He woke in his apartment at 3 AM, cable news murmuring from the television he'd left on—something about the economy, about people losing homes, about the world ending in increments. Outside, November rain streaked the window like wounds on glass.

Sofia was due back from her shift at the hospital in an hour. She'd crawl into bed smelling of antiseptic and other people's emergencies, and he'd hold her until she fell asleep, until he had to leave for his own job. They were zombies, both of them—walking corpses trading shifts in the same bed, passing like ships in the hallway, eating cereal together in exhausted silence.

He moved to the fish tank. The three goldfish—Socrates, Simone, and Sartre—circled in their neon-lit bowl, mouths opening and closing in perpetual wonder. Sofia had bought them after the miscarriage, saying something about needing to keep something alive in the house.

That was six months ago.

The sphinx cat, Bast, wound around his legs, purring like a small engine. She was all angles and sharp dignity, demanding worship. When Sofia had brought her home—another distraction, another something to care for—Marcus had joked that the cat was like an Egyptian monument: enigmatic, timeless, and judging them silently from atop the refrigerator.

Now the sphinx seemed to know. She'd taken to sleeping in the nursery they'd painted yellow three days before everything went wrong.

The goldfish, at least, couldn't remember the yellow room. They lived in an eternal present, unburdened by the weight of what almost was.

Marcus pressed his palm against the glass. Socrates nipped at his fingerprint.

"Lucky bastards," he whispered.

The door clicked. Sofia stood in the hallway, still wearing her scrubs, face pulled tight in that way it had been pulled for six months. She looked at the fish tank, then at him, then at the sphinx watching them both from the couch's armrest.

"Did the fish eat?" she asked.

"Not yet."

She moved to the cabinet, found the canister. "I'll do it. You should sleep."

"I have to be up in two hours."

"I know." She sprinkled flakes into the water, and the goldfish erupted into sudden, beautiful motion. "At least someone in this house is hungry for something."

They stood there as the fish fed, as cable news droned on about a world that kept ending while they kept breathing, two zombies keeping goldfish alive for reasons they couldn't name, watched by a hairless cat who seemed to understand something they'd forgotten.

Marcus reached for her hand. Her fingers were cold from the November draft that always leaked through the doorframe.

"Fish sleep with their eyes open," he said.

Sofia looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in weeks. "I know."

"Do you think they dream?"

"I hope so."

"Of what?"

She squeezed his hand. "Of forgetting."

The goldfish circled, and circled, and circled—each turn a new beginning, each memory lost before it could hurt them. Outside, the rain fell like it had been falling for centuries. Inside, two people stood together in the blue light of an aquarium, holding on to something that refused to let go.