Supplements and Strays

Marcus stood in the kitchen, staring at the amber plastic bottles lined up on the counter like silent soldiers. His wife Elena's new vitamin regimen—a $400 monthly investment in hope, or maybe just in the fear of decay. At forty-seven, he understood the impulse. His lower back ached every morning now, a persistent reminder that time was eroding him molecule by molecule.

Their chocolate Lab, Buster, nudged Marcus's hand with his wet nose, demanding the attention that Elena no longer seemed to offer. The dog had been Marcus's companion through eleven years of marriage, through the miscarriage that hollowed them both out, through the slow drift into separate bedrooms. Buster didn't care about the unsaid things, the accumulated resentments that lived like ghosts in their split-level home.

"You're like a bull in a china shop," Elena had said last night, her voice sharp with something that sounded like hate but tasted more like exhaustion. She'd been talking about his job—corporate restructuring, firing people he'd hired—but Marcus knew she meant everything. The way he moved through rooms, through conversations, through their marriage. Too heavy, too present, too much.

That's when he'd started seeing the stray cat. A mangy calico that appeared on their back deck three weeks ago, watching him with eyes that held no expectations. Unlike Buster, who demanded affection, or Elena, who demanded answers he couldn't provide, the cat simply existed. It appeared when he stepped out for his morning cigarette, vanished when he approached, returned as if testing his commitment to something uncertain.

Marcus shook two vitamin D capsules into his palm—Elena said his levels were dangerously low—and swallowed them dry. He felt like a fraud. All these pills, all these attempts to arrest the inevitable, while the real rot was internal, unseen by blood tests or covered by insurance.

The cat was on the deck again when he opened the door. Buster bounded out, tail wagging, but Marcus whistled him back. For once, he didn't want to be the bull, charging forward, crushing everything. He wanted to be the cat—solitary, self-contained, impossible to capture.

"Marcus?" Elena's voice from inside. "Are you coming to breakfast?"

He watched the cat leap gracefully onto the fence, disappear into the neighbor's yard. Freedom, he thought, was just the ability to leave. The question was whether he had the courage to exercise it.