The Cat Who Knew

The dead plant's leaf finally fell onto her keyboard. Maria stared at it, a brown **palm** frond of corporate decay.

"You look like shit," Chen said from the adjacent cubicle. "Did you sleep here again?"

Maria didn't respond. She just traced the coaxial **cable** snaking across her floor, the same one she'd tripped over three nights ago when she'd found him—her ex, Tom—standing at her desk at 3 AM, smelling like someone else's **orange** perfume.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You're not." Chen rolled his chair closer. "The merger announcement is in twenty minutes. Evans is in full **bear** mode. If your projections aren't ready—"

"They're ready."

"Your personal life isn't."

That was the thing about Chen. He noticed everything. He'd noticed the scratches on her arms where she'd dug her fingernails during panic attacks. He'd noticed the way she stared at the empty chair across from her in meetings. He'd noticed the **cat** that started appearing on her fire escape last week—a scrawny tababy with a torn ear that watched her through the glass with judgmental eyes.

"I saw him," Chen said quietly. "This morning. At Starbucks. With her."

Maria's fingers froze on her mouse. "And?"

"He looked miserable."

"Good."

"No, not good." Chen's voice dropped lower. "He looked like someone who'd made a mistake and was too cowardly to fix it. Like someone watching his life fall apart and pretending he was still in control."

Maria turned to him. Chen's eyes were kind. That was the problem with kind men—they saw you when you didn't want to be seen.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because that cat on your fire escape?" Chen nodded toward the window. "I've been feeding it. It's not wild. It belonged to someone in 4B who moved out and left it behind. It's waiting for someone to claim it."

He paused.

"Some things get left behind, Maria. That doesn't mean they're worthless. It means someone else was too blind to see their value."

The announcement alarm chimed on her computer. The merger. The promotion Evans had promised her. The life she was supposed to want.

Outside, the cat scratched at the glass.

Maria stood up. "My projections can wait."

"They can't," said Chen, but he was smiling.

She opened the window. The cat jumped onto her desk, knocking over the dead plant. Soil scattered across her financial projections. Maria laughed for the first time in three weeks.

"You're hired," she told the cat. "Benefits include daily tuna and a human who's done letting coward men determine her worth."

Chen high-fived her **palm** as they walked past Evans's office together.

The **orange** sunrise hit their backs. somewhere, Tom was miserable. somewhere else, a merger was happening. But here, in this moment, Maria was finally the one calling the shots.