She hadn’t known that Thai food came in those neatly folded boxes. She thought that that was an honor reserved solely for Chinese food, but she supposed that it really didn’t matter. She peeked over the top of the bag and gazed inside at three boxes of Thai food and a plastic container with sauce. She left the bright lights of the city and wandered onto her road, on the city’s outskirts.

            She noticed things. The Millers had gotten a new car. She should probably get a car again. Streetlight number five was brighter today then it had been yesterday. She heard shouts. Alice and Henry Baker were fighting. That meant it was 6 o’clock. They always fought at six, except on Fridays. On Fridays, they shattered the peaceful night silence at 10. They had a daughter, Gina, who would come and visit her, when she was home. It had been Gina who had told her about the Thai place. She hadn’t had Thai before, but Gina said it was good.

            She could hear glass breaking in the Baker’s house and wondered how much glass there was in that house. They had a fishbowl in their front window with a small goldfish in it. It was new, Gina’s friend had given it to her and the poor fish sat neglected in the Baker’s window.

            “I should change my name to Goldie,” she thought her mind wandering from the fish.

            The fishbowl and a lamp rocketed out the window and shattered on the street. Alice Baker peered out the window. The fish flopped pathetically on the street.

            “Mrs. Baker, your fish appears to be dying!” Concern crept into the formally spoken words.

            “Shove it Elaine,” Alice snapped closing the window.

            She sighed. Elaine, yes that was her name, the one on her birth certificate and driver’s license.

            Elaine knelt down by the flopping fish and opened her sack. She pulled out the box of rice and dumped it on the street. She scooped a bit of water from a nearby puddle into the box and delicately removed the fish from the shattered glass and plopped him into the box with its muddy water and bits of rice. She picked up the bag and fish-in-a-box and began to walk home.

            Her apartment was small, and the living room slash kitchen was a monochromatic gray. She put a plug in the sink and poured the fish into it. She rinsed the mud and rice remains from the box, put clean water in it, and then scooped the fish out of the sink.

            “Fear me not… Bartholomew, for I wish you no harm.”

            The fish, Bartholomew, flicked his tail and swam around the small cardboard container. Elaine brought Bartholomew over to the coffee table, set him on the glass center, brought over the Thai food, and began to eat. Thai food was good.

            “What doth yonder fish consume?” Using a chopstick, she placed a grain of rice into the water.

            “Eat and be merry young Bartholomew, tomorrow I shall find you a suitable container to reside in.”

            She looked at the small golden fish through the hazy gray light of the room. Bartholomew looked like a smart fish, a fish that she could talk to, a fish that would listen to her when she didn’t want to be Elaine the orthodontist’s secretary. Bartholomew would listen to her and she would listen to him. He’d be like Shakespeare, her old cat. People would say she was crazy, talking to a fish, but she and Bartholomew wouldn’t care, because they were comrades.

            Bartholomew listened to her complain about being a secretary until very late into the night. He floated around the small box in the dark, wondering what a bedroom was. At least, he had been wondering, until he forgot. He floated to the bottom of the box and fell into a peaceful Fishy sleep.

            The old Thai food box was beginning to fall apart, and water had leaked into a small puddle on the glass middle of the coffee table. Bartholomew flopped pathetically on the bottom in the last remaining droplets of water. Bartholomew’s underdeveloped fish brain had begun to go into shock. He could only breathe through one gill, he was surrounded by a sticky nibble of old rice (he missed the old fish food he had used to eat; but it was a very distant memory for the small goldfish). The strange woman had not come to visit him.                                                                                                                        Elaine had overslept that Saturday, and had completely forgotten about her new pet. She awoke and strode out of her bedroom (decorated all in lavender) and was shocked to see the large seeping puddle of water on her faithful coffee table. She was even more shocked to find Bartholomew in his little fishy death throes.                                         

"Friend Bartholomew! What hath thou fool of a caretaker done to you?"                                   

She rushed to the kitchen and found a large plastic bowl, the kind she used to store large quantities of old soup in, filled it with a half inch of water. She quickly strode to the coffee table with the bowl and dumped poor, frightened, and confused Bartholomew into the water.                                                                                                    

When Elaine finished filling the bowl Bartholomew splashed around happily.                  

"Poor dear Bartholomew, My irresponsibility almost cost you your life. I am forever in your debt, my beloved companion."

Bartholomew blinked.                                                                                                  

Elaine sat down on the slate colored couch and looked around the gray room. "If only I were as responsible at home as I am when I am earning my incoming I would truly be a wonderful person. If I had been responsible, Shakespeare would be here and you and he could have a grand time bridging the species gap. Alas, had I not left the door open that faithful day and my darling feline would still be here. However my fair Shakespeare escape and departed from this world at the hands of a car.” She sniffed and looked over the fish bowl. A tear splashed into the water and Bartholomew darted to the other side of the bowl. Elaine wiped her eyes and stood up.                                                                   

“Come Bartholomew, you need a tour of my humble abode.”                           

She picked up Bartholomew and carried him into her lavender bedroom.          

“Colors are so nice, don’t you think? My rooms are colored. This is the Lavender Room. It’s so much more romantic than calling it a bedroom,” she walked out of the Lavender Room and into the living room/kitchen, where Bartholomew had spent the night. “This is the kitchen and living room. I call the kitchen half the kitchen, and the rest is the Gray Room. But I need to paint it. Gray is so dreary, don’t you think? Perhaps it would be nice to have a yellow room. Or an Orange/Gold room. Yes, I’ll prepare to paint it tomorrow, and then you can come with me when I buy the paint. The bathroom is the Blue Room. Blue is a very nice bathroom color, don’t you think?” She walked back over to the coffee table and set Bartholomew down.                                                                       

A knock sounded at the door and Elaine rose to answer it. Gina Baker walked in.        

“Is my fish alive?” she asked rushing into the Gray Room and looking around.   

“Coffee table,” Elaine said, re-locking the door. She walked over to Gina and pointed. “I named him Bartholomew, I hope you don’t mind.”                                              

“The name’s bigger than he is!” Gina laughed, looking down at the tiny fish. “I’m calling him Barty, if you don’t mind.”   

“Not at all. You don’t mind that I took him do you?”                                        

“Not at all. My parents would’ve just left him there to die. They enjoy fighting to much to pay attention to me, let alone a poor, helpless fish.”                                          

“You’re going off to college soon aren’t you?”                                                  

“Yeah, I just sent out my applications. Can I come and visit Barty whenever I want?”                                                                                                                                                    

“Were do you want to go? I’ll give you a spare key so that you can stop by when I’m not around.”                                               “I applied to Penn State and Uconn. Thanks.”                                                  

“Cool. I was thinking of painting the gray room orange… or yellow.”                

“Paint it yellow. And buy Barty a good fishbowl, he’s not a Tupperware kind of fish.”                                                    “That’s Tupperware?”                                                                                                             

“Yeah, see the label?” Gina pointed to the rim of the bowl, where the slightly raised writing said TUPPERWARE.                      “Oh, so it does,” Elaine laughed. She loved talking to Gina, it was so nice, and how they could hold to conversations at a time. And Gina didn’t think she was strange. Gina and Bartholomew were like that. They new she wasn’t crazy, like the rest of the world thought she was.                                                                                                                                

“Has Barty seen the whole house?”                                                                                          

“Everywhere but the White Room.”                                                                                          

“Why not the White Room?”                                                                                                    

“I didn’t know if you had finished it yet.”                                                                                  

The apartment had another room that was unused. Gina had asked to use it as a hideaway from the noise at her place. Elaine had agreed, and they painted the room silvery white, with white furniture, but it was unfinished.                                                               “We’ll show it to Barty when we finish. He can live there when I go to college.”            

Elaine nodded. “Would you like some tea?”                                                                             

“Yeah, sure.”                                                                                                                           

“I tried the Thai place. Bartholomew spent the night in one of the boxes.”                                  

Gina laughed. “Poor Barty. How was the food?”                                                                      

“ Good.”                                                                                                                                 

“ Elaine, how far is Pennsylvania from Brooklyn?”                                                                    

Elaine shrugged. She had only been out of Brooklyn twice. Once when she visited France and then those four years when she was at college. It was sad, but she didn’t like leaving the Basic vicinity of the city. She was rooted to her small little apartment, unlike Gina, was nine years her junior and wanted nothing more than to leave all of New York behind. She wondered what the little fish would think about her being rooted to one spot.                

It was 5 o’clock on a Friday and Gina had to get home for dinner. She and her mom would eat in silence until her father came home smelling of cheap perfume and beer at ten, then her parents would begin to fight, and Gina would either lock herself in her room or sneak out a window and come knocking on Elaine’s door.                                                          

“Feel free to come over later. If you want I can air out the White Room and make the bed.”                                                                                                                                          

Gina gave a weak apprehensive smile and nodded before leaving. As the door clicked shut, Elaine collapsed on the couch and began to talk to Bartholomew in her old Shakespearean way.                                                                                                                                  “The poor child fears her family so. What doth you think friend?”                                               Bartholomew swam in a loping circle.                                                                           

“She goes to college next year. She’ll like the freedom. You’d like freedom wouldn’t you Bartholomew. I think I’ll get Chinese take out tonight. Do you like spring rolls?”       

            The Gray Room/ Kitchen was no longer gray, but a sunny yellow. Gina had come over and helped her paint, and then they finished the White Room and trimmed the windows in all the rooms with the leftover yellow paint. Bartholomew splashed around playful in his new plastic fishbowl (that was meant for fish) and hid in the leafy aquatic plant that was nestled in the teal gravel.

            And then two months past, and Bartholomew and Elaine hadn’t heard from Gina, so they stayed up until midnight eating Brooklyn’s best pizza and talking about soap operas and hidden meanings in Romeo and Juliet.                                                                                        “Is there perhaps a greater moral meaning in this great work of literature?”                                 Bartholomew swum a loop-de-loop and looked up at Elaine with inquisitive fish eyes, or maybe he was just hungry.                                                                                                            

“I know that the main theme is acceptance and not holding grudges, but what if there’s something deeper?”                                                                                                                   

Bartholomew was saved from answering by a key turning in the doors lock. Gina walked in and sat on the couch.                      “It’s Monday. Your parents stopped fighting an hour ago, so it’s eight. What brings you here?”                                      “Relatives in Ohio are taking me to live with them. Alice and Henry are getting a divorce.”                                                                                  “Oh, Gina, I truly am sorry.”                                                                                                     “I don’t mind… Can I take Barty with me?”                                                                             

A single tear trickled down Elaine’s cheek. She got up and grabbed an empty box. It was from Tonight’s Thai food. She rinsed it and filled it with water. She plugged the sink and dumped Bartholomew into it, scooped him up, and placed him in the box. She smiled down at Bartholomew. The frightened confused fish darted around the box rapidly. Elaine was crying as she placed the box inside the fish bowl and handed it to Gina.                                                                                                                “Come back and visit. Bring Bartholomew,” She whipped her eyes and smiled.             

Gina gave her a hug, and Elaine kissed the box of Thai food. Bartholomew thudded his head against the side of the box a few times.                                                                    

“I’ll come visit. I promise,” Gina headed towards the door.                                                       

“No. I’ll come and visit you,” Gina smiled, told Bartholomew to wave, and walked out the door.

            She sold her apartment and bought a house in Ohio. She had decided that Brooklyn wasn’t a good place for a thirty year old to live. She had a cat named Dante and a dog named Tolkien. And a guppy named Sebastian. Her living room and kitchen were an amber color, her bedroom was a pale green, and her bathroom was blue. Bathrooms look good in blue. The study was red, and the extra room, the room no one used was white. She had lived in that house for two months when summer started, and hadn’t met any of the neighbors.                                                                                                                            I should put out a big mat that says WELCOME she thought, her mind straying from the butterflies in her garden. She noticed things. A car pulled into the driveway of her neighbors and a tall girl got out. The car was gray, and the license plate said BARTY. She heard a knock at the door and went to answer it.                                                                                   “My aunt told me to bring you this,” The girl who got out of the gray car held out a plate of banana bread.                        “How kind of your Aunt.”                                                                                                        

The girl looked up. “Elaine?”                                                                                                    

Elaine, yes that was the name on her birth certificate, and on her new driver’s license, that she used when she drove into town in her blue car.                                                    

“Hello Gina.”                                                                                                                           

The banana bread was cast aside, and Gina and Elaine, untied again, walked next door to see the aged Bartholomew.                                                                                                   

Elaine said hello. And Bartholomew blinked.