The Eighth Inning Fox

The fedora had seemed like a good idea when she'd left her apartment—armor, really—but now Elena sat in the corporate suite feeling like an impostor at her own life. The drought had turned the baseball field into something resembling a dust bowl, and even the water in the plastic cup tasted of resignation.

"You're overthinking it," said Marcus, her boss, though he'd already moved on to schmoozing the client from Chicago. The client's wife kept looking at Elena's hat with something approaching pity, which was somehow worse than the contempt Elena had been preparing for.

Below them, a stray dog trotted onto the field—a bedraggled golden retriever that had somehow slipped past security. The crowd's reaction was immediate: some laughed, some cheered, a few booed. The dog paused at second base, lifted its leg, then continued toward center field with the casual confidence of someone who knew exactly how out of place they was and didn't care.

"That's your spirit animal," said Jason from the next seat. He'd been married to Elena's best friend before the cancer, before the distance, before Elena had started sleeping with his brother's wife. "Or maybe mine."

She'd forgotten Jason was even there. He'd lost weight. His hair was thinning. He looked tired in that specific way that came from sleeping alone in a house that had been designed for two.

"Your hat," he said, "is making a statement."

"That I don't belong here?"

"That you're not from here." He cracked open a peanut. "Marcus hates it. That's a good thing."

Elena studied Jason. He'd always had this quality—a fox in henhouses, watching, calculating, knowing where the vulnerabilities lay. She'd underestimated him once. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

"I saw you with Sarah," Jason said quietly. "At the memorial. You think you're the only one who's lonely? You think you're the only one who made choices that can't be unmade?"

The dog was being escorted off the field now by security guards who seemed genuinely apologetic about it. The game resumed. Marcus was laughing at something the Chicago client had said.

Elena took off her hat. Her hair was flattened. She felt exposed.

"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked.

Jason finally looked at her, really looked at her, with eyes that had seen things and decided not to speak of them. "Because foxes don't announce themselves," he said, "and because some secrets are better kept."

He handed her a fresh water. The ice clinked. The baseball cracked against someone's bat. Somewhere beyond the stadium, real foxes were doing whatever foxes did when no one was watching.

"Want to get out of here?" he asked.

Elena didn't answer immediately. But when she did, she put her hat back on.