Season's End

Maria sat on the fire escape, her iPhone glowing with messages she wouldn't answer. Inside, David was probably watching the baseball game—their ritual every Sunday, even now. The Mets were losing, as usual. Just like them.

She dragged on her cigarette, watching the smoke curl into the October night. Below, an orange streetlamp flickered, casting sickly light on the alley where their tabby cat, Buster, used to chase moths. Buster was David's idea. "Couples need things to care for together," he'd said, between rounds of cheap beer and ambitious promises.

The cat had run off three weeks ago—right after the fight about her promotion, the one where David had called her ambition "a symptom of something broken." She'd searched for Buster for days, walking their Brooklyn neighborhood until her feet blistered, calling his name until her throat burned. David had just watched from the window, saying it was nature's way, that cats belonged to themselves, that maybe they'd learned enough from caring for something together.

Her phone buzzed again. David, probably. Or maybe her mother, wanting to know why she hadn't called, why she wasn't coming to Thanksgiving. She'd stopped explaining months ago.

A tomcat wandered into the alley below, striped like Buster but meaner, scarred from fights Maria couldn't imagine surviving. It yowled at something in the shadows—a rat, a rival, its own reflected violence. She watched it pounce, miss, lick its wounded paw.

The baseball game would be ending soon. David would be drunk enough to call, sober enough to say things he'd spent all week rehearsing. Last time, he'd told her that she'd never really loved him, that she'd loved how he made her feel stable, how he made her feel chosen. He'd said it with the precision of someone who'd spent too many hours alone with his own wrongness.

She took out her earbuds. They'd spent their first anniversary at a baseball game, drunk on overpriced beer and the terrifying certainty that they'd found something rare. David had bought her an orange-flavored Italian ice from a vendor, sticky and artificial and perfect. They'd eaten it in the bathroom stall when it started raining, and he'd kissed the sugar from her lips, told her he'd never known anyone who made ordinary things feel like grace.

She unlocked her phone. Twelve messages from David. One from her boss. Two from her mother. The notifications piled up like snow, relentless and indifferent. She selected them all, pressed delete without reading, and let the phone slip from her fingers. It clattered on the fire escape, screen cracking against the metal grating.

The tomcat below looked up, then returned to its hunt. Maria closed her eyes. Somewhere, a baseball stadium erupted in cheers or boos—she couldn't tell the difference anymore. The season was ending. Finally.