The Cat Who Knew Better

Marcus stood at the edge of the rooftop pool, forty-three stories above the city that had chewed him up and spit him out in three-piece suits. The water was impossibly blue, artificial as everything else in his life since the bull market had turned his conscience into collateral damage.

"You look like you're considering swimming," Elena said from behind him. She wore that ridiculous floppy hat she'd refused to part with since college, a remnant of the girl who'd wanted to save the world before corporate ladder-climbing had claimed her soul too.

"Just thinking."

"About how you helped hedge funds short that healthcare stock? Or about how Sarah moved out last Tuesday?"

Marcus flinched. Elena had always been his friend—the one who told the truth when everyone else served up compliments like appetizers at the networking mixers they both despised.

A stray cat wound around Elena's legs, calico and indifferent to their existential crisis. It had appeared on this rooftop three months ago and refused to leave, as if judging their privileged problems with ancient, predatory wisdom.

"Sarah left because I became everything I swore I wouldn't," Marcus said finally. "I'm trading human lives for percentage points. The bull runs, and we all forget we're trampling actual people underneath."

Elena's hat caught the wind, nearly flying away before she anchored it with one hand. "So quit."

"It's not that simple."

"It never is. That's why they call it a sacrifice instead of a transaction."

The cat meowed, as if in agreement, then leaped gracefully onto the narrow ledge above the pool, silhouetted against the skyline. Marcus watched it and felt something crack open in his chest—something that had been calcified by bonuses and board meetings and the polite fiction that success meant a damn thing.

"Sarah took the cat," he said suddenly. "I should go get her."

"Yes," Elena said. "You should."

Marcus pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over Sarah's number. The bull market could wait. Some things mattered more than money.