Dead Man Talking

Marcus stood before the bathroom mirror at 3:47 AM, adjusting his grandfather's fedora. The hat had survived three generations, but Marcus wondered if he would survive another quarter. Below the hat, his eyes had the hollow, vaguely surprised look of a man who'd been running on fumes since the Obama administration.

He was what his colleagues politely called "experienced"—in his industry's euphemistic hierarchy, somewhere between "seasoned" and "expensive." Lately, though, Marcus felt more like a zombie in a suit, going through the motions of high-frequency trading while his actual self watched from somewhere near the ceiling, making wry commentary.

The market had been in a historic bull run for seven years. Everyone made money. Marcus made more than most, and yet he'd stopped being able to remember what money was supposed to buy. The orange glow of dawn was already threatening the horizon when he climbed into his Mercedes, another object that had long ago ceased to bring him anything resembling joy.

At forty-three, with a divorce, a drinking problem that wasn't technically a problem yet, and a McMansion that echoed like a mausoleum, Marcus had achieved everything his immigrant parents had sacrificed for him to achieve. He'd spent two decades climbing. The joke was that he'd arrived at the summit only to realize he'd left his soul at base camp.

His phone buzzed—Samantha. The only woman he'd considered dating since his marriage imploded, mostly because she was the only person who seemed to find his particular brand of existential exhaustion charming rather than pathetic. They'd been dancing around each other for months. Marcus kept finding reasons to wait.

He parked in the underground garage and rode the elevator to his office on the 42nd floor. The cable from his building's high-speed internet had been upgraded three times in five years—always faster, always more expensive, always connecting him to nothing that mattered.

Marcus turned on his terminal. The numbers began to flow. Green arrows, red arrows. He'd made his firm forty million dollars last year. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt something real.

He picked up his phone and typed: "Dinner tonight?"

Sometimes the living had to make the first move.