Bull Market, Bear Heart

The swimming pool at 5 AM was the only place Marcus could still hear himself think. He sliced through the water, lap after lap, the chlorine burning his eyes like the truth he'd been avoiding for months.

At work, Patterson—that bullish boss who thrived on intimidation—had already demanded the quarterly projections by Friday. 'You've got to be more aggressive, Marcus,' Patterson had said yesterday, his neck thickening like a provoked animal. 'This market rewards the bull, not the cautious.'

Marcus touched the pool wall, gasping. Bullshit, he thought. The market rewarded psychopaths.

He'd been twenty-two when the scout from the Yankees farm system had watched him pitch that perfect game. Baseball had been his religion, his identity, his future. Then the rotator cuff had snapped like a dry twig in his junior year of college, and just like that, the churches closed their doors.

Now, at thirty-seven, he was vice president of regional sales at a firm that sold software nobody understood to companies that didn't need it. His wife Elena had stopped asking if he was happy three years ago. Their conversations were mostly about property taxes and whose turn it was to drive Sophie to gymnastics.

Marcus pulled himself from the pool, water streaming from his body like a second skin. In the locker room, his phone lit up with a notification from Patterson: 'URGENT: Conference call moved to 6 AM.'

He sat on the bench, naked and dripping, and laughed until he cried. The bull would win again. The bull always won.

Then he remembered Sophie's baseball game last Saturday—how she'd pitched her first no-hitter, the way her face had lit up when she saw him in the stands. How she'd run to him afterward, sweaty and radiant, and said, 'Daddy, did you see me?'

Marcus stood up, wrapped a towel around his waist. The water had made him clean. The game wasn't over yet.

He would call in sick. He would take Sophie to the batting cages after school. And tonight, he would tell Elena that he wanted to start living again.

The bull could have the market. Marcus would take back his life.