He’d missed an email. It was their fault, really. The actor’s manager hadn’t marked the message with one of his usual headings—URGENT, IMPORTANT, SIGNIFICANT. It got buried underneath the other hundred emails Blake received daily, and he didn’t see the instruction to swing by Petco before the party. By the time he got the call from the actor’s assistant, a different guy—“Where are you with the fish?”—he was already late. 

At Petco, he asked how many fish he could legally buy. 

The woman in the red vest shrugged. “Depends what you want them for. ”

Blake told her the fish were for a film. 

“You make movies?” The woman asked while she scooped the fish from the tank with what looked like a ladle and carefully transferred them to a row of water-filled plastic bags. 

“Yeah.”

“Hear that Gigi?” The woman said when she handed Blake a box. All the fish bags were carefully lined up inside. “You might be a famous fish.”

Blake smiled, didn’t have the heart to tell her he wasn’t any closer to getting someone behind the camera than she was. “I’ll let you know when the movie comes out.”

At the actor’s house, Blake followed posters that pointed him toward the backyard. There, a moonbounce sagged with the weight of kids inside. The actor and his friends—directors Blake admired, producers he wished he could work with, actresses he wanted to cast—were standing by the pool. 

Blake walked over. “I’m Alan’s assistant. I brought the fish.”

+

The actor turned around. He flashed the same smile that was currently plastered above Sunset, Highland, San Vicente. Blake handed him the box. 

But the actor wasn’t ready, he’d probably never handled any item that wasn’t explicitly defined as a prop. The box fell. The bags burst when they hit the Astroturf and the fish sputtered onto the lawn. 

A few of them flopped around as the kids came crashing from the moonbounce. The actor’s son first. “The fish!” he screamed. “They’re dead!”

Blake was already on fours, trying to cup the water pooled in the box into his hands, make a little oasis of safety for the fish that seemed to still be clinging to life, but the kid appeared to be right. They all looked dead already. Is that how it worked? Did they die as soon as they sucked air instead of water? Weren’t they supposed to last a little longer than that?

He struggled to grip all the fish while the actor yelled about a lack of professionalism. The ones Blake couldn’t hold found the pockets in his slacks and dress shirt. 

He already had a voicemail from his boss by the time he made it to his car. “Your stuff is in the lobby. Don’t bother coming up here. There’s nothing to say.”

Blake wanted to tell his boss there was a lot to say. Severance, future referrals, a refund on the fish. It wasn’t his fault they were defective! It was the woman’s fault! She should have told him! Now look at him. No more job and a bunch of dead fish in his clothing. Blake drove back to the Petco. 

The red-vested woman was smoking a cigarette out front. She looked at the dead goldfish gaping from Blake’s shirt pocket. 

“The fish you sold me were defective,” Blake said. 

“What?”

“They died as soon as you gave them to me,” Blake said. “How do I know you didn’t just sell me a bunch of dead fish?”

The woman pointed to the blaring red Petco sign above her head. “This isn’t Gelsons.” 

“Is that supposed to be funny? I got fired because of you. Because the fish you sold me died as soon as I got to set. Or maybe before? Maybe you thought it’d be funny to sell me a bunch of dead fish?”

“They fired you for that?”

Blake nodded. 

“I can’t give you a refund,” she said, tossing her cigarette to the concrete. “But I can show you something.”

Blake followed her to an alley behind the building.

“We don’t advertise this,” the woman said. “I’m not entirely sure it’s legal.”

She led Blake to what looked like a trash chute. A steel grate with a handle. 

“Some people who can’t afford a fancy vet, they’ll bring their pets here. Usually, it’s too late. If the pets don’t make it—”

The woman gripped the handle, pulled. A blast of heat hit Blake in the face. 

“—this is where they go.”

The woman reached into Blake’s shirt pocket, snagged the goldfish, dropped it in the furnace. 

“Bye, Billy,” she said. 

The woman named all the dead fish pulled from Blake’s pockets. Ritzy. Blotches. Walter. He listened to the backstories she’d developed—the narratives she’d constructed around what their underwater lives were like. Fins had a crush on Daisy but she liked to sleep under the big rock with Alpha. Jake took everyone’s food. Wimpy—the smallest in the tank—only ate the flakes other fish had nibbled and spat out. 

“I’ve got to ask you,” the woman said when she’d finished wiping her eyes. “How do you get fired from a movie you’re in?”

Blake had to explain to her that he wasn’t in anything. Definitely not a movie. 

“So that thing you said. About making my fish famous—”

“They were for a birthday party. This actor’s son.”

She looked disappointed. 

“You probably know him though!” Blake told her the actor’s name. 

The woman said she’d never heard that name in her life. 

+++

Joe Bohlinger is a writer from Los Angeles. He received his MFA from Oregon State University where he currently teaches writing. He lives in New Orleans.