"I'm thinking chubby. I liked those fluttery ones, with the big eyes."
"The butterfly telescope eyes?"
"I think so. You were really into them the last time I came and I kind of, well, fell in love with them too."
She wandered to the tank of butterflies and stared. They floated, red, orange, pearly light reflecting on her face. Their mouths opened and closed with the rhythm I had memorized. I leaned forward and pinched her cheeks, forcing her lips into a fish face.
"Glub glub."
"Fuck off," she laughed.
That night I dreamed about Ruth. I had just built a bookshelf for my den, and spent most of the evening organizing my books. Steinbeck. Salinger. No, Salinger comes before. Tartt. Hemingway. Some obscure books on Taoism. At first I dreamed about pages. The letters blurred, forming a braille. Braille swirls. Then the designs flew off the pages. When they hit the air, they became suspended, lightly floated in front of my face. I pushed them back with my hand. They caught, and I pushed harder.
"Blow," I heard Ruth whisper and I blew the patterns away, revealing her. She was sitting with her legs spread wide, and in her hands she had a knife.
"What are you doing?"
"Sacrifice me, baby." Baby?
Fuck. I woke up sweating. That was not the type of dream guys wish for, let me tell you. Like, if that were a lucid dream, Ruth would be holding... Fuck. I told myself I gotta stop this. I pulled myself out of bed and turned on the lights to my aquarium. The ryukins rushed to the surface.
"Nice try, guys." But they knew I was a sucker. I really was. I sprinkled some shrimp chips over the surface of the water. Stevie Nicks and Malcom X butted each other, while the others gulped the little red disks. I watched them, and let the thoughts in my head clear.
I shouldn't have been having dreams about Ruth. She was just some girl with a huge amount of money, recently and suspiciously acquired, who decided to blow it on a new goldfish hobby. Oh sexy, definitely sexy. That's what I would do with a lot of money.
That was something that bothered me. I mean, sure, when I got past the weird attraction I had to a woman I had only seen a couple times, it was the spontaneity that bothered me. It was off. "No one just coughs up that kind of money on something they've never tried before," I whispered to Malcom X, "That's fishy, if you ask me." Malcom's eyes glared at me. He didn't appreciate my puns any more than Ruth did.
"You could at least fake amusement, you little sonofabitch." I smiled at that, and the little goldfish wiggled back to the others. I had never loved my hobby more, but now I was genuinely sharing it with someone, and she was genuinely falling in love with it. That was another thing I found sexy about Ruth. The way she looked at me when I talked to her, the way she fiddled with her earlobe when she was thinking. I laughed out loud at that. She lapsed into those bouts of deep thinking so often it was painfully obvious that biology really puzzled her.
Malcom was back at the front of the tank, and his face seemed to say to me, "Maybe that's a good thing Jack. You can't get bored when there is a sea of knowledge to be released." Talk about release— that was something I needed, if you get my gist.
