The Art of Drowning

The fox arrived at dusk, sleek and improbable at the edge of Martha's rooftop garden. Thirty floors up, it shouldn't have been there—a rust-colored anomaly against the gridlock of Chicago traffic below. She watched it through her office window, gin and tonic sweating on her desk, another twelve-hour day bleeding into night.

"You're still here?" Richard's voice from the doorway. He'd been her mentor, her friend, the one who'd championed her promotion when half the partners thought she was too volatile. Now he stood avoiding her eyes, knowing what the board had decided.

"Just watching the wildlife," she said, gesturing with her glass. "Strange things happen when you're not looking."

The fox dipped its head—perhaps acknowledging her, perhaps finding something worth eating in her neglected herb garden. She thought of the cat she'd left behind in the divorce, Tom's parting shot: 'You can't even keep a plant alive, Martha. What made you think you could keep us?'

The water cooler had been empty when she'd passed it earlier, that plastic guillotine where careers went to die in whispers. She'd overheard them talking about 'restructuring,' about how some people weren't 'adaptable.' The corporate euphemisms were getting sharper.

"They're announcing it tomorrow," Richard said, finally meeting her gaze. His face was weary in a way she hadn't noticed before. "I tried to—"

"Save it." She drained her drink. "Did you know about the fox?"

"What?"

"On the roof. How does a fox get thirty floors up?"

He followed her gaze to the garden outside. The fox was gone now, just a trembling stalk of rosemary marking where it had stood.

"Maybe it climbed," he said. "Maybe it was looking for something worth finding."

Martha set down her glass. She thought about all the things she'd climbed toward—corner offices, impossible standards, other people's definitions of success. The cat was probably happier with Tom. The fox had known when to leave.

"You know what's funny," she said, reaching for her bag. "I think I was the one who wasn't adaptable."

She walked past him toward the elevator, and for the first time in fifteen years, she didn't look back at the office she'd already outgrown.