It took a lot of restraint not to get up and go buy the oranges with my own money, but my happiness did not return the entire weekend. When we got home the male of the fishbowl still had his gills erect. His seductive behavior seemed arrogant to me. The female swam with drooping fins and her movements, listless compared to his, made me sad.

On Monday I left the house early. I sat down in the brasserie on the corner and ordered a tall orange juice. I also had a café crème and a croissant and paid with our joint credit card. Afterward I went to a bookstore and bought a novel, then spent an hour trying on clothes in the store on rue des Pyrénées that carries large sizes and found the perfect sweater to replace mine. I went back home midday, just before lunchtime. Once inside, I went directly to the living room and peered into the fishbowl, as if consulting an oracle: the male still had his fins unfolded but now his companion also exhibited a physical change. All along her body two dull brown horizontal lines had appeared. I cooked pasta with eggplant and ate it standing up, looking out the kitchen window at two workers doing repairs on the facing building. I then diligently washed the dirty pot and utensils. Afterward I went out for a walk through the neighborhood and ended up at the library. I felt a pull to go in, but it closed early on Mondays so I went back home and read my novel while waiting for Vincent. When he came in I showed him the lines on the female’s body, which had me a little scared. But to him they looked insignificant.

“Those lines are barely noticeable and I don’t think they mean anything. I’m not even sure she didn’t have them before,” he said.

We ate dinner in silence, reheated rice that had been in the freezer for months. Vincent did the dishes and went into the living room where he worked until dawn. Without a word to him I started putting up the teddy bear wallpaper border in the baby’s room, a chore we’d been meaning to do for weeks but that neither of us had gotten around to. I just wanted to take care of one of the infinite things we had to do. True, the result wasn’t as tidy as I’d wanted it to be, but it wasn’t disastrous either. Vincent, however, saw it as provocation. He insisted that I had intentionally put it up unevenly to make him feel guilty.

“You could have asked me to do it. I don’t know why you keep trying to be a victim lately.”