Bear Market Blues

Marcus sat in his corner office, forty-two years old and feeling every day of it. The bear market had been chewing portfolios to bone for six months, and his clients' panicked calls had become a kind of background drone to his existence.

At least he had Cleo. His elderly tabby cat waited at home, the only living thing that didn't want something from him. Not returns, not reassurance, not explanations why their retirement funds had halved since spring.

"You're good," he told the cat each evening, scratching behind her ears while she purred against his chest. "You don't care about the S&P 500."

But Cleo had her own decline. Last week the vet said kidney failure. Options were expensive, treatments uncertain. Marcus found himself weeping in the exam room, more grief than he'd felt when his marriage ended three years ago. When had he become the kind of man who cried for a cat?

That evening, he dug through boxes he hadn't touched since the divorce. Found his old baseball glove—faded leather, pocket perfectly broken in from thousands of catches with his father. They'd played catch every Sunday until the university accepted him, until business school, until the years somehow stacked up between them like unplayed innings.

His father had died while Marcus was closing his first big merger. He'd skipped the funeral. "Critical timing," he'd told himself. "Dad would understand."

Cleo watched from her bed as he squeezed the glove, his palm still fitting the pocket perfectly. He remembered baseball's simplicity: three strikes, four balls, clear rules. Unlike markets, unlike life.

The next week, he took time off. Sat with Cleo until the end came gently. Then he drove three hours to the old cemetery, knelt at his father's grave, and placed the baseball glove on the stone.

"Should've been here," he said. "Should've—" But the words caught, and he realized that some strikeouts you don't get to swing again.

Back in the city, he sold the corner office. Started coaching youth baseball. The kids didn't care about his portfolio. They just wanted to hit the ball, run bases, learn how to slide.

Sometimes, on summer evenings, he felt his father's presence in the dugout. And occasionally, among the parents cheering from the bleachers, he saw a familiar stray cat watching from beyond the outfield fence, as if keeping score on a game that finally mattered.