Goldfish in the Bull Market

The water glass sat between us, condensation pooling on the coaster like unspoken truths. Sarah's eyes were red-rimmed, and I realized with a dull thud of recognition that she was crying.

"They're calling it a correction," she said, her voice cracking. "But we both know what it is."

I'd known Sarah for seven years—through her divorce, my promotion, the slow erosion of our friendship from weekly dinners to occasional texts. We'd met at the worst possible time: 2019, when the bull market seemed eternal, when we were thirty-three and invincible, when the goldfish she'd won at a carnival had lived three years longer than anyone expected.

"I heard about the layoffs," I said carefully. I'd kept my job. She hadn't.

She laughed, dark and sharp. "Layoffs. Is that what we're calling it when they eliminate the whole department? Mike's gone. That girl with the tattoos—I never learned her name. All gone."

Outside, a dog barked rhythmically, lonely and persistent. The apartment felt suddenly too quiet, too full of things we weren't saying. I thought about that goldfish, how it had swam in endless circles, three seconds of memory at a time. Maybe that was a blessing. Maybe the trick was forgetting before the pain could accumulate.

"I tried to call Marcus," she said. "He didn't pick up."

Marcus. Her ex-husband. The man who'd left her for someone half her age, someone who didn't remember when we were all going to be rich forever, when the bull market climbed and we climbed with it, confident and stupid and young.

"He's an asshole," I said, and meant it.

"He's my friend," she said, and I realized she was right. Some people become family through love, others through shared wreckage. We keep them because they've seen us at our worst, because they know exactly how we got broken.

"So," she said, reaching for her wine glass, "what happens now?"

The truth was, I didn't know. The market had turned. We were in our forties now, and the bull was dead, and all that remained was figuring out what to do with the wreckage. But Sarah was here, and I was here, and the dog next door had finally stopped barking, and sometimes that was enough.

"First," I said, "we drink. Then we figure out the rest."