Dead Pool Thursday

The fluorescent lights hummed their eternal complaint as Marcus stared at the spreadsheet. Thursday again. The office pool—the dead pool, as they called it in hushed whispers—had another entry today. Susan from Accounting, the one who always brought homemade cookies, was gone. Heart attack at forty-two.

Marcus felt like a zombie himself lately, moving through meetings and emails on autopilot. His divorce had finalized six months ago, and he was still occupying the same apartment, the same life, like a ghost haunting its own routine.

"You look like shit," said Sarah, his oldest friend, sliding into the chair across from him at lunch. "When's the last time you slept?"

"Sleep's for people with something to wake up for."

She rolled her eyes. "That's such bull, Marcus. You're forty-five, not dead."

He should have been grateful for her persistence. Most friends had drifted away after the split, uncomfortable with the raw edges of his unraveling. But Sarah kept showing up, kept calling him on his nonsense.

"My brother's dog had puppies," she said abruptly. "He needs someone to take one. I thought of you."

"A dog? Sarah, I can barely keep a plant alive."

"Exactly. Something that needs you might be good."

That weekend, he found himself at her brother's farm. A massive bull watched them from across the fence, inscrutable and powerful. In the barn, a litter of puppies wrestled in the straw. One tumbled over his shoe—golden fur, one ear that refused to stand up, eyes full of something stupidly hopeful.

"This one," Marcus heard himself say.

That evening, sitting by his apartment complex's long-empty pool, the puppy asleep on his lap, Marcus realized something. He wasn't waiting to die anymore. The dead pool would have to wait.

He'd named the dog Lucky, which was ridiculous, but everything felt possible suddenly. Even at forty-five, even after everything, life could surprise you. Maybe that was the point.