The Bottom of the Ninth

Marcus chalked his cue stick at O'Malley's, the blue dust coating his fingers like the residue of another failed marriage. The pool table stretched before him—a battlefield of green felt where he'd been losing to himself for three hours.

"Your shot, zombie," Jackie called from across the table. She'd been calling him that since his brother's funeral last month. Marcus just nodded, the nickname landing like a baseball to the chest—something that should have hurt but didn't anymore.

He lined up the shot. The eight ball sat inches from the corner pocket, waiting like a judgment he kept postponing. His apartment was empty now. Sylvia had taken everything except his old baseball glove and Pickles—their orange tabby who'd been Marcus's companion through fifteen years of marriage, three layoffs, and countless nights spent staring at the ceiling wondering when his life would begin resembling the one he'd imagined.

Pickles had died two days after Sylvia left. The vet said cancer. Marcus said his heart had simply stopped participating.

"You're still paying for that round," Jackie reminded him, cracking open another beer. "And you're still thinking about her."

Marcus bent over the table, the pool cue suddenly feeling like a divining rod searching for water in a desert. His eyes stung—whiskey, chlorine from the pool he'd cleaned religiously every Sunday, or just the accumulated grit of being forty-two and realizing you're the only one who doesn't know the rules to your own life.

He struck the cue ball. It caromed off the rail, kissed the eight ball gently, almost tenderly, and sent it spiraling into the pocket with a soft thud that sounded suspiciously like a door closing for the last time.

"Game," Jackie said, already racking the balls for another round. "Same time next week, zombie?"

Marcus smiled for the first time all night. "Why not. We've got nothing but time."

Outside, a stray cat yowled at the moon. Somewhere distant, a baseball game let out, the crowd's roar drifting through the summer night like the echo of a life he might have lived. Marcus ordered another drink and prepared to break.