The Bear in the Bull Market

Marcus stared at the coaxial cable snaking across his office floor like a dead snake, its severed end mocking him from where the tech contractor had left it three weeks ago. At 47, he'd become the kind of man who noticed unfinished cable work instead of just walking over it.

"Bull market's correcting itself," his broker had said that morning, cheerful as a grave robber. Marcus's portfolio—his exit strategy from this life of quarterly reports and hollow meetings—had dropped twelve percent since Monday. He'd been running calculations all day, trying to determine if he could still afford the cabin in Montana, or if he'd be spending his fifties in a cubicle.

His phone buzzed. Sarah.

Three years ago, she'd left him for a sculptor who made installations out of recycled glass. Last week, she'd called at midnight, drunk on wine and nostalgia, saying she'd made a terrible mistake. Now she was texting him pictures of her apartment, newly empty, boxes stacked like the walls of a cardboard fort.

"Running away again," he muttered. She'd done the same thing when her mother got sick, when her gallery lost funding, whenever reality became too heavy to hold.

He stood up, knees popping, and walked to the window. Forty-two floors below, the city churned through rush hour, thousands of people running toward something they couldn't name. Somewhere down there, a bear market was devouring savings accounts, foreclosing dreams, making paupers of the comfortable. Somewhere else, someone was falling in love, someone else was dying, and cable news anchors were turning it all into content.

Marcus called Sarah.

"I'm not coming back," she said before he could speak. "I just—I wanted you to know I thought about it. About us."

"The sculptor?"

"He's sober now. Three months. It's exhausting, Marcus. Recovery is this constant... bearing of weight. I don't know if I have the stamina."

He watched the cable on his floor, thinking about how long it had been there, how he'd meant to fix it, how some things just sat in your life until you forgot they needed attention.

"Recovery's boring," he said. "That's the point."

She laughed, surprised and genuine. "When did you get wise?"

"About the same time I realized the bear market was just winter. It always ends."

They hung up with no promises made, no accusations leveled. Marcus bent down and finally coiled the cable properly, tucking it behind his desk. Some things you fix. Some things you don't. The art was knowing which was which.