It was a gift from an admirer-patron of hers from one of the many places where she tends bar. He had walked in with two clear plastic bags in each hand, smiled, and plopped them on the counter. They’re fish, Japanese, he said. Maybe he supposed that their being surrogate fish parents would deepen their rapport and lead to some conjugal privileges, but because he’d gotten drunk and fallen down the flight of stairs leading to the bathroom, the other fish ended up at my apartment.

            Also it turned out they were territorial – or just assholes – therefore, they wouldn’t tolerate any other fish near them. They would instinctively fight to the death, or so Meille had been told. I wondered whether the fish had eyeballed each other while they were on the counter, in their respective bags. What does fish smack-talk sound like or look like, maybe they can deform breath-bubbles to make them say, “Hey, Fuck you, buddy.” Probably not. With few exceptions, only humans go around looking to start fights for no reason.

            She told me I only had to feed it these little betta-bite pellets – once a week – and keep it out of direct sunlight. She said she wanted me to have it because it reminded her of me; then she walked out the door.

            I picked up the bowl and looked at it. “Alright, you glorified goldfish; let’s see what’s doing.” It was a deep burgundy with a powder-blue sheen highlighting parts of its body. Its lower jaw got a coat of it, as did the tips of its fins. Its most distinctive features, actually, were the contours of its fins. 

            Whether or not it was from Japan, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had gotten its name for no other reason than because it resembles those queer kabuki dancers with their garish kimonos. Its dorsal fin was long and farther back than expected and thinned as it drifted away. The tail fin could’ve been mistaken as a tapered extension of its body because it didn’t fork sharply in two; it made up for this by growing a pelvic fin that began at its stomach and briefly made contact with the rear fin before trailing under and away. If all this wasn’t lavish enough it had two more appendages growing out of where its chin would be that looked like a failed attempt to grow arms. As he turned from me, the atrophied limbs floated behind him.

            I manhandled the bowl like your mother would your face if she wanted to make eye contact, but you didn’t. It eventually got the idea and stopped trying to swim against my current and stood, floated still, looking dead at me. Black beady eyes, pronounced under-bite, geisha-like fans for fins framing its face like earrings,

            A pet that I only had to feed once a week wasn’t bad as far as low maintenance pets go. It beats the Chia Pet…which, incidentally, died, but that’s beside the point. There was still the scummy chore of changing its water, but I figured that I could empty out half of the dirty water and refill the rest with clean water. So it wouldn’t really be clean, just cleaner than before. I decided to keep it.

            The first few days came and went with it on a small bookshelf outside my bedroom. In the mornings and evenings, I’d pass by with little more regard than to see if it had gone belly up yet. In the elevator I’d wonder if I felt at all comforted that there was another pulse in my apartment. I hadn’t even given it a name.

            I arbitrarily decided to make Friday its feeding day. Usually once I got home from work, changed into sweats, heated some leftovers and watched some news, I’d remember it. The second Friday into our acquaintanceship, I’d grown curious about something, bubbles. A sizeable cluster of them, taking up a third of the surface of the bowl.

            I bent down to look at it. I saw the little bastard sneer, then curl its lip before burping up a bubble. It tremulously floated upward and nudged itself into the cluster that resembled more and more a roe waiting to be fertilized by the seminal load of some alpha male. I returned eye level, “You whore!” What is it trying to communicate? I wondered. What? I’m changing your water regularly, I’m feeding you once a week, I only left you by the window at high noon once. 

            It lowered its barracuda-like jaw and burped up another bubble.

            “OK. So you like blowing bubbles, do you? Drooling? Well, I guess a fish blowing bubbles is equivalent to a human drooling, right? I mean, if you spit in the water, who could tell. I know what I’ll call you, Baboso!”

            Merriam-Webster’s  Spanish-English Dictionary:

                                   Baba nf 1: spittle, saliva 2: dribble, drool

                                   Baboso, sa adj 3: silly, dumb

            I asked Mielle the next time she came over if she had any idea why Baboso was blowing bubbles. She said she didn’t know but had noticed hers doing the same, although not as much as mine. She thought that it might’ve been some trick that the Japanese taught them. “They’re always doing things like that.” I couldn’t tell if she was serious. As she was getting her stuff together, I asked her again which sap had given her the fish. She said that it was Kenny.

            “And he told you to feed it once a week?” my voice rose in irritation.

            “Yeah,” She interrupted her search for her keys, “why?”

            When I explained to her that Kenny was a borderline retard who nearly strangled his dog to death because he didn’t understand that the “choke” in choke-collar was literal, she gave an exasperated look and quickly continued searching. She walked back into the foyer, keys jangling in hand, and just said that he was a sweet guy and a good tipper. Then she walked out the door. I looked at Baboso, “some tip.”

            “Alright Fish, so you weren’t trying to be cute with the bubbles. I was just starving you to death. My bad. But couldn’t you have spelled something with those bubbles? Y’know, like ‘Feed me,” “Help, I’m starving,” or “Mielle’s a twit.” I dropped in a few extra pellets to make up for the privation, but his under bite fixed that frown on his face.

                                                         *         *          *    

            I came into the apartment fuming. Trying to be a jack-of-all-trades doesn’t pay when you’re working for a grown man who has never stopped thinking like a rich kid. Nothing is impossible, he says. With your father’s money at your disposal, sure. But outside that insular bubble there was plenty that was impossible, like for instance – I walked past Baboso barely noticing his flailing – asking me and Tony, a 260-pound sloth with a herniated disc, to load and then unload a U-haul truck of 50 boxes of magazines. The magazines were guides highlighting what’s trending in the Meat Packing District. Creating this “initiative” has been the company’s priority for the past few months.  

            With nothing but one hand-truck and my structurally sound spinal column between us, we were supposed to deliver these copies to all the bars, clubs, restaurants, and stores that were featured in the guide. We were supposed to be done by three o’clock. It was nine. I paced around the apartment tingeing every gesture with a restrained hint of violence: opening a cabinet door, taking off my boots, emptying my pockets. Even taking a leak became an adventure. I stood in front of the toilet, legs shoulder width apart, as if I were standing outside a bar at 3 in the morning daring some guy to hit me. Meanwhile my hands went about their automatic task. Between the layers of undergarments, I began wrestling to get a hold on myself. I realized the problem: the lower half of my body had been retreating, subconsciously arching away from my impending grip.  Finally, penis in hand, I exhaled and peed.       

            I could just make out the last set of Baboso’s thrashings from where I stood. They were violent contortions that had him curling into himself, then uncoiling, and whipping the broadside of his body at an imaginary nuisance. He propelled himself forward with this action and slung his head from side to side, looking for the direction in which he’d swatted his target. I stood over his bowl, “and just what’s your problem?” I said, looking down at him. I didn’t much appreciate anybody else throwing a tantrum while I was in the middle of my own. He quickly turned to me and floated just beneath the surface, pectoral fins violently flapping on his sides. His body was a constantly tensed quiver, as if he was – as odd as it may sound – centering his gravity in order to strike at a moment’s notice in any direction. Looking at me, he slowly distended his gill-flaps. His barely two-dimensional face was now a football.

            It’s hard to guess a person’s intention when they have no whites to their eyes. But the little bastard just kept staring. I dropped in some dried-up bloodworms. Before I could walk away, I saw him eyeball the rust-colored little crescents. He focused on the largest piece, committed it to memory, then dove down, swam around, and finally under it, where he froze. He homed in on it and began to rise. Without moving a single fin, he seemed to will himself toward it, before exploding upward and taking a bite, then shooting a sharp left in a blur of crimson. For whatever this whole production was worth, the bloodworm looked intact, except that I’d heard the crunch, as if he’d seized his prey by the neck and cracked it in one deft strike. He’d bitten off a small piece clean. “Ferocious, little fucker, aren’t you?” He circled the remaining piece.

                                                      *           *          *

            Mielle looked over at the bookshelf. “How’s he doing?”

            “He’s alive.”

            She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Arms over her head like a ballerina, she worked her wavy brown hair into a sloppy bun that rested on the crown of her head. She would come out looking like she had the freshly plucked feathers of some exotic bird jabbed into it. But for now she was just in front of the mirror, head aslant and turned to me. She glanced from me to the bowl, from me to the bowl.

            “Why?” I asked.

            “Oh,” she mulled her words over, hoping that they’d better phrase themselves before reaching her lips, “because, mine kinda died.”

            I stood between her and the bookshelf. “kinda? Then I’m guessing you kinda kept feeding him once a week? So did you kinda flush him down the toilet after you kinda starved him?

            “They’re not even meant to live that long, y’know?”

            “Baboso’s doing fine.” I flicked the fish bowl, and he thrashed around to face her.

            “Listen, I’m going away for the weekend.”

            “Oh…kay,” I said. Then she walked out of the apartment. I stood there for a second. Baboso floated. The phone rang. It was the paunchy, silver-haired, drunk of a super, otherwise known as Miko. “I come to fix sink.”

            One of the reasons I spent so little time in my apartment was because of shoddy plumbing: the water wouldn’t stop flowing out of the faucets in the bathroom; I had to turn off the main valve underneath the sink. Also the toilet wouldn’t flush unless it was in a good mood. For those midnight emergencies, I had to keep a bucket of water next to the toilet. I had talked to the super a number of times about it but always got excuses. The last one was at least believable. He said the plumbing in the apartment was so old that they no longer made replacement parts. He’d have to replace the whole sink.

            “I come this Saturday. Before I go away, I come, okay?”  

            Sure, I told him. Somewhat forced out of my apartment for the weekend, I’d probably just head into the office on Saturday. He had the key and could let himself in. I reminded him to check the stove. The stink of gas lingered after every use. I was by the fishbowl as Miko assured me everything would be taken care of and then continued to prattle on. Baboso looked up at me. He probably expected food, even though he had no reason to. I still believed that most fish were stupid enough to eat themselves to death if given the chance, so I had started keeping him on a schedule – preferring to skip a meal if I was too late instead of glutting him on the next. No, he knew there wasn’t anything coming. He just noticed, much like I did at that moment, that I was needlessly lounging around this area.

            I pressed my fingertip to his bowl and watched it expand and turn white. He responded by hovering in front of it and then extending his gill flaps. I deftly reached a finger into his bowl and patted him on the head. He seemed more stunned that I would attempt such a breach of formality than scared. He quickly recollected himself after swimming away, stopping in the same position, facing the same direction, just a little farther away. I laughed.

            3:30 pm on a bright Saturday afternoon and I was looking forward to happy hour. It was much too nice of a day to spend indoors, besides there was no need to overdo overtime on a weekend. The super was to do his thing, and since he probably drank too much the night before, he wouldn’t get started till late in the morning. He’d give me a call in a little bit to let me know he was done. I would spend the night getting hammered enough to put the plumbing through an exhaustive test in the morning.

            My phone rang. I expected to see my home number flashing on the screen – Miko had the habit of calling you from your home phone when he was repairing something in your apartment – but it was a different number, and so I assumed it wasn’t him. I was wrong.

            “Your bathroom is fixed. It was pain in butt but all new pipes.”

            “Great…how about the kitchen?”

            “No more leak,” he said, as if he were performing a magic trick, “I had to get behind stove to look at gas pipe…had to move fish…”

            “What?”

            I suddenly remembered the night before. In a half-forgotten attempt at self- discipline, I forced myself out of bed and went to the kitchen, fishbowl in hand, to change his water. When I was done, I put him on the stove, which is right next to the sink, washed my hands and went back to bed…. then I remembered seeing him in that same spot as I flew out the door in the morning.

            I came back to Miko’s rambling because something in his voice bothered me. It was the self-satisfaction I heard in it, the ego of a job thought well done that in its rush to tack-on trifling accomplishments undermines the whole.

            “…Where did you put my fish?”

            “By the window…on the windowsill…give fish a little sun…ha.”

            “Do me a favor. Take my fish out from there.”

            “Why? I can’t. I’m away.”

            “What?”

            “I told you I stop by and fix before I go away. I’m driving to Monticello with family.”

            That explained the harsh Slavic accents in the background, the high-pitched squeals of kids who wouldn’t shut up.

            “You killed my fish, you drunk!” I hung up the phone and made my way home.

I remembered the one and only time I had left Baboso on the windowsill. I was cleaning and had worked my way toward the kitchen, moving furniture farther forward or back depending on my progress. Baboso had been placed on the kitchen table so that I could move the bookshelf and then moved to the windowsill when I reached the table. It was about a half-hour before I returned everything to its rightful place. The feng shui of the room was off: Baboso’s bowl wasn’t where it should be. When I got to him, he was swimming erratically, surface level, and shuffling from side to side, glued to the side of the bowl farthest away from the window. His Chaplinesque waddle made me laugh. Even the icy feel of the bowl didn’t dampen my amusement any.

On the train ride home, I thought of his cold bowl as I held the rail overhead. I had grabbed the tiniest stretch of virgin rail – free of any disconcerting warmth or moisture. A bored commuter, unprepared with the requisite I-pod or newspaper, noticed my impatience, my right leg solidly planted as my left rocked with a bend at the knee. The tapping of my heel was inaudible over the train’s noise, but it was there. I looked out the window constantly, waiting for the reassurance that landmarks bring, that the blur of tenements and store fronts were leading home. The bored commuter assumed that I didn’t know where I was or where to get off. When he scanned every face in the car and eventually came back to mine, and I was still looking anxiously out the window, he knew that I was either running away from or to something. Eventually he’d trace his own increasing agitation to me, relief coming only when one of us got off the train.

            As the 7-train turned out over Queens Boulevard, sunlight poured through the windows. I turned my head, briefly making eye contact with the commuter. He grew more irritable. I blinked repeatedly, batting away the lingering sunspots as I stepped out at my stop. I sprinted down the stairs of the subway station. I didn’t pretend to understand the impulse but was certain that the cadence was right. It was the rhythm I’d started on the train with my foot that the rest of my body now followed, and I was now terrified to break. Aware that I was nearly sprinting, I continued this aggressive, forward lean until I reached my door.

            Immediately I knew something wasn’t right as I reached into my pockets. I was missing something, lacking heft on one side of my body, missing the tension of fabric weighted down and pressed against me. In my left pants’ pocket: money, credit cards and phone; in my right: I.D., lighter, and…keys?

            I hadn’t noticed. Had I not been still once before arriving at my door? I gripped the knob and gave it a hard push, secretly hoping that Mike’s incompetence would extend to locking doors. The thick thud and immediate kickback made it clear that he’d locked both locks. I scanned through my options: Mike wouldn’t be back until Monday; Baboso would be dead. Could I call a locksmith and have the door taken off the hinges…for a fish? If only I could somehow block out the sunlight…I know, I could fill balloons with paint and pelt the window until enough of them burst. Wait. It’s a fucking fish. I’ve eaten raw pieces bigger than him that were more expensive.

            I slowly walked away from the door. I figured I could make it back to the office and then to the bar. Don’t take it personally, Baboso. I’ll have a drink in your name. I held up my finger, imagining his tiny skull resting on its tip, little under bite pointing at me, “ah, Baboso, I knew him well.” Maybe I’d go for a drink first then to the office…besides the janitor had to let me onto my floor. I didn’t feel like searching the whole building for him. As I continued debating, I walked toward the stairs. I passed the window in the hallway and accidentally stared out of it. What is it about looking out windows that goes so well with indecision? The fire escape. I peered in the direction of my bathroom window. It was open.   

            The apartment below me was empty, and since the super was away I couldn’t get to the roof without setting off the alarm and bringing down the fire department. My upstairs neighbor was my only hope, and I use the word loosely. The woman was a chain smoking, haggard crow of a retiree. Our relationship had gotten off on the wrong foot after she’d rushed to close the entrance door on me a year back. She wasn’t convinced that I lived there even after my repeated insistence. Ten years between the two of us in the same building and we had never bumped into each other. From that point on our greetings consisted of low grunts and imperceptible nods. I was convinced she had some psychic powers because anytime I bumped into her, whether I was turning a corner, stepping into the elevator, or walking through the entrance, she was ready for me with a mouthful of smoke. She made no attempt to avoid fumigating me.

            I knocked on the door.

            “Who is it?”

            “It’s your downstairs neighbor.”

            “What do you want?”

            “I need to get to the fire escape.”

            “Go away”

            “I’m locked out.”

            “So? get your key from the drunk.”

            “He’s out of town”

            “Go ask somebody else. They’re all connected.”

            “I’m just trying to save my fish, you miserable, old shrew!”

            I began to walk away, when she opened the door. Like the welcome of a Turkish parlor, a plume of smoke wafted forward, but this wasn’t incense or the flavored exhaust of a hookah; it was the harsh nicotine, day-old coffee smell of always. Even less agreeable was the pale, shriveled face that followed.

            I avoided eye contact, instead focusing on the loose chicken skin hanging from her elbow. Her right arm reached across her thin frame and sank into a well-worn groove on her belly, her left, smoking hand, propped up perpendicularly.

            “My fish”

            A jagged smile ripped across her face like you’d carve into a pumpkin with a rusty knife.

            “aw, how precious.”

            “…”

            “Well, what are you waiting for? The fish isn’t going to save itself,” She swung the door open with one hand, with more strength than I thought she had in her whole body, before turning into the cloud of smoke behind her. I sprang for the door; I didn’t want to hear it slam shut. 

            We were in the bathroom. The window was about halfway open. We stood there for a second, quiet. I looked at the chipped, mildewed encrusted glass, the blotches of discoloration. I thought the biggest favor I could do for her would be to break it so that it could be replaced. I certainly didn’t want to touch it (or pay for the replacement), so I waited for her to open it wider. She didn’t move.

            I went through the slit and grabbed onto the fire escape. Through a combination of pulling and wriggling I made it to the other side without flaying myself on the sharp windowpane or gnarled brick. I turned around to begrudgingly thank the hag and saw that she was laughing hysterically at the sight of my ass and legs flailing. She dismissed me with a wave of her hand, as if to say she’d already taken her compensation in the form of that spectacle.

            I ran down the fire escape and slipped in through the bathroom window knocking over bottles of shampoo and conditioner and nearly giving myself a concussion because I went in headfirst. With one hand on the floor of the tub, the other on its lip, one foot against the shower knobs, and the other still on the windowsill, I thought I heard her. I righted myself and poked my head out the window to see her looking down at me in tears, still cackling!

            I ran to the kitchen and found Baboso’s bowl under a broad shaft of light, illuminated like an exhibit at a museum. He was glued to the side of the bowl farthest from the window and would turn around violently every few seconds so that a different side of him was against the glass. When he looked up at me all I could focus on was the O-shape that he mouthed in great heaves. He came up to the surface, that perennial frown now returning to his face. I picked up the bowl and felt the heat through the glass. I pointed him toward the mess in the bathroom. He blew a bubble and dove under unimpressed. There’s no pleasing some people.

Mielle came into the apartment jet-lagged. I was at the computer in my bedroom with the blinds drawn. She dumped her carryon bag on the sofa and then turned to the bookshelf. It wasn’t to check for Baboso; it was just the pull of the room. She did, however, notice that his bowl wasn’t there and so assumed the worst.

            “Don’t feel bad,” she said, walking into the bedroom. “It lasted longer than mine, besides I told you they weren’t meant to live very lo…” she saw Baboso in his bowl on a bookshelf next to me.

            “…”

            “Don’t look so surprised. He’s fine. And not going anywhere for a while.”

            I turned to her. There was a mutedly expectant look on her face. But also something else; she was tired from her travel, leaving a point of departure it’d never been my place to ask about; or maybe tired of coming back. Her eyes were puffy, face covered in a thin film that a single-use hot towel never succeeds in removing. The few strands of hair she’d tousled in taking off her bag hung limply over her upturned nose. Her lips parted – the lower, full and pouty; the upper, non-existent – she managed a smile. I looked into her eyes; she momentarily slunk back. I saw the briefest flutter of recognition.