The Last Bull Run

Elena stared at her computer screen, the cursor blinking like a dying heartbeat. Another quarter, another set of metrics to fabricate. The zombie companies in their portfolio — businesses that should have died years ago — kept shambling forward, fed by endless rounds of venture capital and creative accounting. She'd been running on coffee and Xanax for three years.

'You selling the bull position?' Marcus asked, leaning against her cubicle wall. He still wore his wedding ring, though his wife had left him eight months ago.

Elena rubbed her temples. 'The market's irrational. I'm holding.'

'That's not what I heard.' Marcus lowered his voice. 'Word is, you're interviewing elsewhere.'

The accusation hung between them. They'd slept together after the holiday party, both drunk on loneliness and the terrible open bar. She'd stopped returning his calls two weeks later.

'I'm running out of patience, Marcus. With this job. With this conversation.'

He flinched. 'I thought we had something.'

'You thought wrong.' Elena stood up, grabbed her coat. 'I'm going for lunch.'

She didn't go to lunch. She walked to the river, watching the water flow toward the ocean. For the first time in years, she wanted something real. Something that wasn't bullshit.

Her phone buzzed. Another email from her boss: 'Urgent: Discuss retention strategy.'

Elena pressed delete. Then she called her mother, whom she hadn't spoken to since Christmas. Then she applied to that graduate program in sustainable agriculture she'd been dreaming about since college.

The zombie wasn't the companies she managed. It was her.

She returned to the office two hours later, typed her resignation letter, and sent it to everyone in her contacts — including Marcus. Then she walked out, not running away, but running toward whatever came next.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Marcus: 'I get it. I'm doing the same.'

Elena smiled. Maybe the bull market hadn't died. Maybe it had just been waiting for them to find something worth investing in.