The Fox at the Table

Mara watched him chew the spinach, those precise, surgical movements he'd perfected over thirty years of dining with people he needed to impress. The cable news anchor droned on about some scandal in the background—corporate malfeasance, another fox in the hen house of American business—but Marcus didn't notice. He never noticed anything that didn't directly serve his agenda.

"You're staring," he said, not looking up from his plate. The spinach stuck between his front teeth like a tiny green flag of surrender.

"Am I?" Mara traced the rim of her wine glass. "Just thinking about that girl from your office. The one with the red hair."

Marcus's fork paused. "Which one?"

Oh, he was good. She had to give him that. Three decades of practice had made him an excellent liar, or perhaps he'd always been this way and she'd simply been too young, too hungry for the life he offered to notice the fox watching her from the edge of the clearing. The cable guy had come yesterday—she'd forgotten to mention that. He'd found something in the wall while fixing the connection. An envelope. Old, but not ancient.

"She seems nice," Mara said. "Smart."

"She's efficient. That's all."

"Like your previous assistant. The one who transferred to Seattle."

Marcus finally looked up. The spinach was gone—he'd swallowed it, or perhaps it had never been there at all, another trick of the light. "What are you trying to say, Mara?"

Outside, something moved across the lawn. A fox, lean and orange as a flame, pausing at the edge of their perfectly manicured garden. It watched them through the sliding glass door, eyes bright with ancient, predatory intelligence. Then it turned and vanished into the darkness.

"I'm saying," Mara said, reaching for the wine bottle, "that I found the cable receipt from Tuesday. The hotel downtown. And I'm saying that spinach stains teeth, but some stains run deeper."

Marcus's face went still. The cable news anchor laughed at something, a sharp, ugly sound that seemed to echo the sudden hollowness between them.

"Mara—"

"Don't," she said, and poured herself another glass. "Just don't."