What the Palm Reader Missed
The fortune teller's shop smelled like incense and desperation. Elena pressed her palm against the woman's weathered hand, waiting for insight about her marriage, about the distance growing between her and David like a slow tide.
"You have a long life line," the woman said, tracing the crease. "But I see water. Much water."
Elena left fifteen dollars lighter and no wiser. The November rain soaked her coat as she walked home, water pooling in her boots.
Their apartment was quiet when she entered. David was asleep on the couch, one arm dangling toward the floor. On the coffee table, beside his phone, sat a small orange bottle — prenatal vitamins. Elena stared at it, her breath catching in her throat. They hadn't discussed children in two years. Hadn't discussed much of anything lately, except whose turn it was to buy groceries or why the rent kept rising.
She moved to the kitchen, needing distance from the orange plastic evidence. The goldfish — David's impulse buy from a carnival three summers ago — swam in endless circles in its too-small bowl on the counter. She dropped a flake of food into the water. The fish surfaced, mouth opening and closing like it was trying to speak, trying to tell her something she refused to hear.
"You're going to die in that bowl," she whispered. "Just like we're dying in this apartment."
The fish watched her with its unblinking eye. She thought about palm readings and prophecies, about how the fortune teller had seen water but hadn't seen the drowning. Hadn't seen that the worst floods happen inside rooms with dry walls.
David stirred on the couch. The vitamins sat on the table like a question she wasn't ready to ask. The goldfish continued its circles, unaware that sometimes breaking the bowl is the only way to stop swimming in place.
Elena opened the cabinet and took out her own vitamin bottle — B-complex for energy, for the days when she couldn't remember why she'd ever thought love would be enough to sustain two people who had forgotten how to look at each other.
The fortune teller was right about the water. It was everywhere now, rising silently, and Elena was finally learning to swim.