The Fox at the Gala

The champagne had gone warm an hour ago, but Elena kept sipping it anyway. At forty-two, she'd mastered the art of looking engaged while her mind wandered to darker territories. Her iphone vibrated in her clutch — third time tonight — but she ignored it. Some messages didn't need reading to be understood.

Across the ballroom, Marcus laughed at something his blonde colleague said. The woman moved like a cat, all fluid grace and calculated intimacy. The weeks of Marcus's late nights, his sudden guardedness with his phone, the way he'd started wearing cologne again after years — it all coalesced into a picture Elena had been too cowardish to frame.

The woman's dress was backless, revealing a small fox tattoo between her shoulder blades. Of course. Of course it would be something symbolic and trite. Elena felt simultaneously ancient and painfully young — the same sick lurch of insecurity she'd felt at sixteen, watching the popular girls from the fringe of the cafeteria.

Her hat, a wide-brimmed affair she'd bought specifically for this evening, felt ridiculous now. Another costume piece in the performance of being Marcus's wife. She'd worn so many hats over twenty years: partner, mother, hostess, sacrificial lamb. The weight of them all pressed against her skull.

The iphone buzzed again. This time, Elena looked.

*Can we talk? Please. I'm worried about you.*

Not from Marcus. From Sarah, the junior analyst who'd looked at Elena with something dangerously like recognition at the holiday party. Who'd lingered after the meetings, whose eyes had followed Elena with an intensity that made her skin prickle.

Across the room, Marcus and the fox woman were leaving together. Not even trying to hide it anymore.

Elena set down her champagne. She adjusted her hat in the mirror of her phone's darkened screen, checking her reflection. Then she typed back to Sarah.

*Yes. Let's talk.*

For the first time in years, she felt entirely, dangerously herself.