Margin Call at Midnight

The coaxial cable had been severed sometime during the third week of his estrangement, leaving Elena with a television that received only static and her own blurred reflection against the dead screen. Not that she cared. The markets had taken everything else.

She sat by the apartment complex's pool at midnight, the water undisturbed, blue-black under the security lights. The dog—a geriatric retriever named Marshall that belonged to neither her nor David, though they'd shared custody of him these past three years—rested his graying muzzle on her knee. His breath smelled like old age and expensive kibble.

"You should have seen him in '09," Elena murmured to the water, to the dog, to no one. "That was a bull who believed his own hype. He leveraged everything, even us."

The bear market had come slowly at first, then all at once. David's hedge fund collapsed in stages—first the tech holdings, then the emerging markets, finally the core positions. Margin calls arrived like overdue death notices. Elena had signed the papers. She'd believed in the bull.

Now the pool reflected a sky empty of stars, washed out by city glow. She wondered how much of it had been real. The vacations. The second home in Tahoe. The way David looked at her across crowded rooms, like she was his best performing asset.

Marshall whined and shifted, his hip joints clicking.

"I know," she said. "Everything hurts."

Inside apartment 4B, David was probably awake too, watching the same static on his own severed cable, nursing the same bourbon, feeling the same bear tearing at his insides. But they'd reached the point where even shared pain couldn't bring them together. Some losses were irreversible.

Elena stood, knees popping. The dog lifted his head, hopeful.

"Come on, Marshall. Let's go."

She didn't look back at the pool or the darkened windows above. Tomorrow she'd cancel the cable service entirely. Tomorrow she'd find a new apartment. Tonight, she let herself feel exactly how much it hurt to lose everything that wasn't real, and keep the one thing that was.