Market Corrections

The bull market had bucked him hard. Marcus sat by the hotel pool at 3 AM, nursing whiskey that cost more than his first car, watching palm fronds silhouette against the Vegas sky like skeletal fingers. His phone showed the margin call — final, absolute, the kind that ended careers and marriages alike.

"You look like a man who's just seen God, and She's laughing."

Marcus glanced up. A woman in a sequined dress that had seen better nights — or better decades — stood by his table. She held out her hand, palm up. Lines etched deep as riverbeds.

"I'm a palm reader," she said. "Or I was, before I became a cocktail waitress who sometimes reads palms. The recession's been a real bitch to the mystic arts."

He almost laughed. Instead, he stared at the artificial pool, chlorinated blue against the desert night. Once, he'd managed hedge funds worth more than entire countries. Now his net worth was negative six figures and his wife had stopped taking his calls.

"Read it," he said, extending his hand.

She traced his lifeline. "Short. But you already knew that."

"Everyone dies."

"Sure, but some people live first." Her finger paused at his heart line. "You made a bet recently. A big one. And you lost."

"The bull was supposed to keep running," Marcus said quietly. "That's what they all said. The analysts, the CNBC idiots, the guys at the club whose bonus pools depended on everyone believing the lie."

"Bull markets," she said, like she was spitting out something sour. "I used to work for Lehman. 2008 ate my 401k, my marriage, my will to be an adult. Now I read palms for drunks by the pool and try not to think about how my MBA cost as much as a starter home."

She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse, offered one. He took it.

"What else do you see?" he asked, lighting up.

"I see a man who's going to be okay, actually. But first, he's going to have to learn that the only pool worth drowning in isn't money. It's people. And the only bull worth following isn't the market — it's the truth you tell yourself when nobody's watching."

She stood, smoothed her dress. "My shift's over. Want to get breakfast?"

Marcus looked at his phone, then at the woman who'd seen everything in his hand that he'd been trying to hide from himself. The bull market was dead. But something else was beginning.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I do."