Flash

For the first time in our entire marriage, she asks, “Where were you last night?”

This isn't what you're thinking – it's not an inquiry into my fidelity. That would make my life sound like something straight out of a Woody Allen film or a daytime soap opera, which it's anything but. She's asking because I'm soaked in a tattered suit, covered in blood and dirt, missing a tooth, and barely hanging on to a bag containing a goldfish.

The water critter, not the cheesy snack.

The last twelve hours or so are such a blur I feel as if my memory's as poor as the one this little guy supposedly is. But, the more I look into its eyes, and it looks into me, opening and closing its tiny mouth, like it's secretly feeding me the answers, the night all starts gushing back to me. Unfortunately, it returns in reverse and in flashes. The brain, luckily, is a wild machine; the events, albeit backward, play in my mind through the sliver of time between my wife's initial questioning and my eventual answer.

Flash!

The same bag. The same fish. My hand reaching out to grab it.

Flash!

A smile, kind and sincere but reeking of fried onion rings and old urine, pierces my soul.

Flash!

I'm sitting on wet pavement picking bits of asphalt off my palms as I begin to taste a mouthful of pennies while my tongue searches for something no longer there.

Flash!

A fist hits me right in the friggin' face.

Flash!

Words of insult are spewing from my lips as I feel my body quivering.

Flash!

I'm approaching a group of young fellas with a question for them that seems to be generating a great sense of fear in me, but I can't make out exactly what it is.

Flash!

A neon sign outside buzzes and flickers “OPEN” above my head.

Flash!

Lightning strikes, and directly on queue the clouds drop their pants to take a piss all over me.

Flash!

I'm moving forward on a city sidewalk, looking down at my thumbs typing, “Just got here. Where you at?” When glance up I see me and my wife's favorite restaurant lit up against the dimly lit street corner – and that's the moment I'm able to piece everything together coherently, forward, taking me to where I am now; soaked in a tattered suit, covered in blood and dirt, missing a tooth, and holding a bag containing a goldfish.

Last night was our fifteenth wedding anniversary. We agreed to meet at this very spot. But she never showed. I waited and waited, where patience grew into impatience, which naturally grew into panic and paranoia. When I asked a group of guys stumbling out of the place if they had seen someone matching her description, they made some sort of wisecrack – a crass one, one I didn't care for. Out of anger, I insulted them, which naturally sent a mitt to my mug, knocking me down to the ground with one less tooth. Cracking my body and soul like porcelain. Beaten, both physically from the fist of a young fella and emotionally from my wife's negligence, I slip into sleep at the nearest bus stop.

Once awake, now the next morning, I remember the bus doesn't run by here anymore. I shuffle my way to the next actual bus stop only to end up finding a fairly small state fair. Just as I was suckered into this marriage I've done my best to make the best of, I'm suckered into a game of ping-pong ball toss.

With a stroke of luck, which I could have used the night before, the first ping-pong ball I toss goes right into the red plastic cup. “You win!” And I see that smelly but kind yet sincere smile from before, handing me a goldfish swimming in a plastic sack.

In this moment, this goldfish meant so much to me. It was the first time something had gone my way in quite some time, and I hoped, despite the last twelve hours, it could be put to good use. Perhaps there was a purpose in my suffering. To bring her and me back to what we used to be. Regardless of why she never showed, I didn't want to come home empty-handed. After all, maybe she didn't forget – maybe her phone died and she couldn't tell me something came up at work. I would completely understand.

But when I heard the tone in her voice asking where I was last night, with not one iota of concern or sympathy – just contempt and impudence – I dumped that little goldfish out and stomped on it as hard as I possibly could right then and there directly in front of her face and asked, with twice the contempt and impudence she had the gall to muster, “Where were YOU last night”?