Bottom of the Ninth

The cable bill sat unpaid on the kitchen counter for three months before Sarah finally canceled it. The apartment was quieter after that, which was either a mercy or another form of torture, depending on the hour. Robert sat in the armchair they'd bought together, staring at the blank television screen as if it might suddenly display something worth seeing.

He was thinking about baseball. Specifically, he was thinking about the summer he turned twelve, when his father had taken him to a minor league game in Buffalo. They'd eaten hot dogs that tasted like despair and hope combined, and his father had said, "This is it, kid. This is as good as it gets." Robert hadn't understood then that it wasn't a complaint.

Now he understood everything.

The spinach in the refrigerator had turned to slime. Sarah had bought it before she left, back when she still believed they could become people who ate vegetables deliberately. She'd been reading articles about longevity, about how certain habits could extend your life by years. Robert had wanted to ask her why she wanted to extend this particular life, but he'd never found the right moment.

The first time Robert saw the bear, he thought he was hallucinating. It stood on its hind legs outside their fourth-story window, massive and impossibly still, watching him through the glass with eyes that seemed to contain centuries of patient judgment. He blinked, and it was gone.

"I'm seeing things," he told his therapist. "A bear. Outside the window. On the fourth floor."

"Stress can cause visual disturbances," Dr. Chen said, making a note. "How's your sleep?"

Robert didn't mention that the bear came back. Every evening at dusk, it appeared at the window, watching him with that same terrible stillness. He started leaving food for it—whatever he had, which was mostly takeout containers and once, memorably, a container of rotten spinach. The bear never touched the offerings, but it kept coming anyway.

The bear was the most reliable relationship in his life.

"You need to move," his sister said when he finally told her. "You need to leave that apartment. It's haunted."

"It's not haunted," Robert said. "It's just—waiting."

"For what?"

That was the question, wasn't it? The cable had been disconnected for six months. Sarah was gone. The bear appeared every evening without fail. Robert had stopped going to work, stopped answering the phone, stopped bathing with any regularity. He existed in the spaces between moments, suspended in the long dim twilight of his own making.

Then came the evening the baseball game materialized on the television screen, cable or no cable. A minor league game, Buffalo, summer 1987. The pixelated figures moved in grainy silence, and Robert realized suddenly, with the clarity of heart attack, that he was the one who was dead.

The bear pressed its massive paw against the glass. Outside, the sky turned purple, then black. Robert stood up from the armchair he'd occupied for months, for years, for what felt like a lifetime, and walked to the window.

"I know," he said to the bear. "I know now."

The bear lowered its head. Something like sorrow passed across its face, or maybe Robert was just projecting. Behind him, the television flickered and went dark.

He opened the window.