Sleeps With The Fishes

Tonight I'm reminded that life can be so simple, so fragile. I'm traveling for work, writing from a hotel in Boston right now. When I reserved my hotel room, the agent asked if I'd like a goldfish in my room. Excuse me? A what?

"A goldfish, ma'am, it's just a little something special we offer our guests. You won't have to take care of it, just... enjoy it."

Call me sheltered, but I'd never heard of goldfish as a feature. It seemed like a good, if odd, idea. Soothing, perhaps. Colorful, certainly. So I couldn't help myself, I got excited. And when I arrived at the hotel last night, after nearly an hour of driving in circles lost, the desk clerk seemed excited, too. "Welcome, welcome, you made it! Lilly is waiting in your room for you!"


And she was. Lilly seemed well enough at 1:30 in the morning when I finally made it to my room, if a little placid. I settled in and slept.

But in the morning, things had gone horribly awry. Lilly was upside-down. Not floating at the top, mind you, and still opening and closing her mouth mournfully, but being upside-down is never a good sign for a fish. This was definitely not soothing. I told the front desk as I left for the day, "I'm worried about Lilly. She's not well."

And upon my return, the spectacularly orange Lilly was gone, replaced by a large, pale white, heartier finned creature. The notepad next to the bowl said "Hi, my name is Lilly!" But it clearly wasn't Lilly.

I'm listening to the Radiohead song"Weird Fishes" in honor. Sleep well in the big aquarium in the sky, little hotel fish. Oh, what you must have seen in your short life. But dead fish don't tell tales.