Market closes at five

The divorce papers sat on her desk like a dead thing. Elena had worked at the firm for fifteen years, watching the ticker tape of other people's lives unravel. Today was different. Today was hers.

"You're bearish on the marriage," her colleague Marcus had joked over coffee that morning. He didn't know. No one knew yet that she'd signed the papers herself.

The office smelled of stale coffee and desperation. Her phone buzzed – David, asking if she'd pick up wine on the way home. The lie came easily: "Working late."

In the conference room, the bull of a senior partner, Jim, paced before the glass wall overlooking the city. He was reviewing her caseload, his voice a low rumble about targets and quarterly projections. Elena watched his mouth move, thinking how strange it was that she could dismantle strangers' lives with such clinical precision while her own fell apart in silence.

"Elena? You with us?" Jim's forehead wrinkled like old leather.

"Sorry. Long morning."

She excused herself and stepped onto the fire escape. Three floors down, a calico cat picked its way along a narrow ledge, tail switching with ancient, indifferent grace. The animal paused, looked up at her with yellow eyes that seemed to know something about survival, about landing on your feet, about the thinness of the line between safety and falling.

Elena lit a cigarette she'd sworn she'd quit three years ago. Smoke curled upward, carrying her thoughts with it. She wasn't bearish on marriage – she was bearish on pretending. On waking up beside someone who'd become a stranger through no fault of their own, just the slow erosion of days and silence.

The cat disappeared around a corner. Elena flicked the cigarette butt into the alley and watched it spark and die. Inside, her phone lit up again. David. Again.

She pressed ignore.

Back at her desk, the divorce papers waited. Somewhere in the building, a clock ticked toward five. Outside, the world kept turning, indifferent as that cat on the ledge. Elena sat down, uncapped her pen, and began to write her own name in the space marked petitioner.