Shoaling in Town

Shoaling in Town

Lifeguards arrive bedazzled for dinner and dancing with two feeder goldfish. “The bowl needs a plant,” says Jess, “I told them we should have gotten a plant.”

Kristy picks up a polished Petoskey stone my dad gave me and gentles it on the bowl’s bottom. “Perfect,” she says, resting the bowl by my loveseat.

“They’ll keep you company until you get back to work,” Jenny says. And we leave, me crutching behind the girls, locking the door.

This bar is sweaty and dark—I watch them shimmer, and they bring me a fruity cocktail with an umbrella, bounce back to tell me stories of men

they dance with to keep me from feeling lonely like, perhaps, the goldfish in the bowl on my table, circling, staring at all my distorted stuff,

pissed they’ve downgraded—no more leafy plastic plants, bright pebbles, pirate ships or deep sea divers—a flashy paradise where they met

new roommates each week as friends went home with strangers. When Jenny, bored and sober, rounds up the lifeguards, we pile in her clunker.

They drop me off to a dark apartment, a dead fish. I scoop it out of the bowl, lamely one-crutch it, limp in a slotted pasta spoon,

to the bathroom and flush. It’s sobering to see its little body rise then sink with the current. I eye the fish left: black, orange, blue, purple,

white and perky, bobbing in conditioned water with the spotted rock and promise it I will make things better―as soon as I can get somebody

to drive me to the pet store. I name him Skeeter, and we doze in starlight —he floats while I moor myself to the sofa, liquor and pills dulling pain.

We hover together. Keep vigil for the unnamed dead.