High Water at the Old Bull

The cat appeared on Marla's fire escape the same week the cable finally gave up the ghost—a ragged calico with one ear that looked like it'd been through a war. Marla, thirty-seven and freshly separated, let the creature in without thinking. She needed something alive in this apartment that smelled of stale decisions and carpet cleaner.

Marla worked the phones at Bull & Sons Financial, where the company mascot was literally a bronze statue of a charging bull in the lobby. The irony wasn't lost on anyone. Her ex-husband had been full of bull too—the kind that promised futures and delivered mortgages they couldn't afford. Now she was drowning in debt up to her hairline, watching the water rise like it had been rising in the basement of her building since the storm drains backed up last week.

"The super can't fix it till Monday," Marla told the cat, which had taken to sleeping on her cable box, the only source of warmth in the drafty apartment. She'd resorted to watching DVDs on her laptop because the cable had been cut when her ex cancelled the joint account. Petty. Like everything else about him.

Her coworker Tommy from Accounting had been bringing her lunch. Not asking for anything, just sitting with her in the break room while she picked at takeout and watched the financial ticker scroll by—bull market this, bear market that, as if either meant anything when you were broke and lonely.

Then the basement pump failed, and water came gushing up through the floor drains like some biblical plague. Marla stood in her bedroom at 2 AM, watching the dirty water creep toward her bed, and the calico cat hissed from atop the cable box as if it understood this was final. This was rock bottom.

Tommy showed up with a wet vac and a calmness that felt foreign. They worked through the night, his shoulders strong under his soaked dress shirt, the water black and smell and everywhere. When it was done, they sat on her fire escape smoking cigarettes he'd filched from his dad, watching the sun come up over the city.

"Your cat's nice," he said, and something in Marla's chest cracked open.

The bronze bull at work seemed smaller the next day. The cat purred on her pillow. The cable guy was coming Tuesday, but Marla found she didn't mind the quiet.