The Fifth Inning

The baseball game droned on below—fifteenth inning, scoreless, the kind of brutal poetry only insomniacs and the truly lonely could appreciate. From my apartment window, I could see the stadium lights cutting through the fog, a beacon for lost things.

My cat, Marlowe, regarded me with that mixture of judgment and affection only cats can muster. He knew what I was. What I'd become.

"It's just surveillance," I told him, pouring another drink. "Corporate intelligence. Legal."

But the distinction had eroded months ago, somewhere between the first wiretap and the moment I realized I was searching through a stranger's life for leverage rather than truth.

The job was simple: follow the CEO's friend, document meetings, find proof of betrayal. Easy money, they said. Clean work. What they didn't mention was how watching someone—really watching them, day after day—makes you start to care. Makes you notice the small things: the way he hesitates before answering his phone, the coffee he buys at the same stand every morning, the loneliness in his eyes that mirrors your own.

I'd become a spy in the most pathetic sense—not for country or cause, but for a paycheck that barely covered the steadily growing bear of a debt I'd accumulated in another life. When I wasn't trailing him through the city, I was here, watching baseball games I didn't care about from behind glass I couldn't open.

Tonight was different, though. Tonight, I'd found what they were looking for. Proof that their friend was selling secrets to competitors.

I looked at the file on my desk. At the photos of meetings that could destroy careers. At the evidence that would finally pay off my debt.

Marlowe jumped onto the desk, knocking over a framed photo—me, younger, happier, standing on a baseball field with friends who'd long ago stopped calling.

I picked up the phone. Not to submit the file. To call him instead.

"Someone's been following you," I said when he answered. "You need to be careful who you trust."

Down below, the stadium erupted. Finally, a run. Something had changed. The game wasn't over, but for the first time in years, neither was I.