Blue Vitamins

The bull-shaped paperweight on Marcus's desk seemed to mock him. He'd bought it in Madrid during that conference where he'd convinced himself that acquisitions were the same as conquests. Now, at 47, staring at the reflection in his office window, he wondered when the conquest had started feeling like a siege.

He swallowed his vitamin D supplement with lukewarm coffee — his doctor's orders for someone who spent their life under fluorescent lights instead of the sun. Elena used to leave them on his counter with a note: "Don't forget to take care of yourself." Now there was just the organizer, a silent dispenser of obligation.

The office pool had $800 riding on whether he'd resign before the quarterly report. He'd started it himself, anonymously, after the third sleepless night. It was the only thing making him feel like he had any control.

His assistant's golden retriever, occasionally brought in on slow Fridays, had licked his hand once. Marcus had almost wept at the uncomplicated kindness of it, the way the dog seemed to see everything and judge nothing. Unlike the board, unlike Elena, unlike himself.

The first time he'd seen the lightning, he'd been driving home from a meeting that didn't matter. It had cracked the sky open, violent and honest, and for three seconds he'd understood that everything he'd built was just dust waiting to be scattered. He'd parked on the side of the road and cried until his phone rang.

"Are you coming to dinner?" Elena had asked. "I made your favorite."

He'd said yes. He'd always said yes.

Tonight, standing at their bedroom door watching her sleep, he remembered the bull in Madrid. How it had looked like it was charging, caught in ceramic stillness. He'd thought it represented power. Now he saw it was just frozen mid-charge, forever impotent, forever going nowhere.

Marcus swallowed another vitamin from the dispenser. Tomorrow he would resign. Tomorrow he would end the betting pool, cash in his own chips, tell Elena everything or nothing or whatever the truth turned out to be.

Tomorrow. The lightning would have to strike itself.