The Last Bull Market

The harness dug into Marcus's shoulders as he shimmied along the suspension cable, forty stories above the East River. Rain lashed his face, cold and relentless. Below him, Manhattan flickered like a dying circuit board.

He'd been a bull once. Not the animal kind—the other kind. The kind who charged into markets, horns lowered, trampling over bears and timid traders alike. Marcus Chen, the Golden Boy. The man who'd shorted the housing market in 2008 and walked away with enough money to buy a small island. Instead, he'd bought happiness. Or tried to.

The money had purchased a penthouse, a Porsche, a wife who left when the second portfolio collapsed, and a daughter who called him on birthdays and holidays—if she remembered. It hadn't purchased what he actually needed.

A fork of lightning split the sky, illuminating the bridge's suspension cables like giant violin strings against a storm-darkened stage. Marcus paused, secured his grip, and watched the electrical spiderweb crackle across the clouds. Beautiful. Terrifying. The way life must look to gods.

"Hey, Chen!" crackled the voice in his earpiece. "You good out there? Storm's worsening."

Marcus's forearms burned. He'd spent three decades pushing paper and clicking mice; now, at fifty-two, he was repairing electrical cables on the Williamsburg Bridge because manual labor was the only thing that shut his brain up. The only thing that made him tired enough to sleep.

"I'm good," he said. "Just finishing the splice."

Another flash of lightning. This time, closer.

And suddenly it hit him—the memory that had been chasing him for ten years, the one he'd drowned in scotch and cocaine and meaningless sex. Not the money. Not the glory.

It was Sarah, sitting at their kitchen table in the first apartment they'd afforded together, before everything. She'd been crying over a letter from her mother—cancer, then terminal—and Marcus had been on the phone with his broker, shouting about some bull run, some opportunity, some chance to make more.

He'd missed her mother's funeral for a client meeting.

The realization struck him like physical force, harder than any wind, brighter than any lightning. He hadn't been a bull. He'd been a coward. Running from anything real, anything human, anything that might hurt.

"Marcus? You still there?"

He gripped the cable, feeling the cold metal against his skin, feeling more alive than he had in years. The wind howled, tearing at his coveralls. Lightning arced through the clouds again, illuminating everything.

"Yeah," Marcus said, his voice steady. "I'm here. I'm good."

He finished the splice, sealed it, began the climb back toward safety. The storm raged around him, and for the first time in a decade, Marcus didn't want to run away from it.

He wanted to weather it.