The goldfish are suitable companions for me now—and even they antagonize me. They’re livelier when their bowl is clean, but that’s the only gratitude they express. I demand more from them than I would of any human. I’ve been daydreaming about their being dead. Not about killing them, but simply about carrying their corpses on a dustpan out to the compost heap and tossing them onto it. I can see them the next day with their eyes sunken and grayed, the color fading from their scales, and the flies busy over them. The trick is that in my fantasy the toad catches all the flies. He is sitting on a rock near their bodies, and as the flies lift, glutted from the rot, he flicks out that negligent tongue. His eyes disappear into his head as though to look quickly inside to see what he’s got, and then reappear. This is not an exhilarating fantasy, nor is it depressing. It is just a recurring picture, as though I passed it ten times each day for years, like the snapshot of my aunt Erma wiping ice cream from the mouth of an unidentified boy in front of the roller coaster at the 19— World’s Fair. That photograph is browning now. It is stuck in the corner of the hall mirror and I note, each time I see it, the fragile angle of her arm and the tidiness of her waist. I have never wondered who the boy may be. Perhaps the goldfish do not even wonder about me.

Only Rennel still wonders about me. And finally, to do him honor and to comfort myself, I have broken all my rules and invited him to spend the night. He knows too much about fish and complains about the jug environment I’ve provided. He knows too much about plants and snorts at the condition of my shrubs. But in all this month I have spoken to no one, and no one who knows me has spoken to me. Today Rennel came, as he always arrives on the last Saturday of the month and prevails upon me for tea.

I enjoy taking tea with Rennel. Everyone else drinks coffee these days.