The Last Supper at Sunset

David pushed the spinach around his plate, watching it wilt in the heat. The restaurant's outdoor patio was framed by palm trees, their shadows stretching long across the white tablecloth. Across from him, Elena stirred her cocktail with deliberate slowness.

'You look like a zombie,' she said. 'You haven't slept in days.'

'Bear market,' David replied, though they both knew it wasn't about stocks.

The truth was, David had been dead inside for months. The job, the mortgage, the carefully curated life they'd built together — it was all suffocating him slowly, like a plastic bag over the head. And last night, something had finally snapped. He'd done something unforgivable. Not an affair — something worse. Something that couldn't be explained away with tears and couples therapy.

Elena set down her glass. Her palm covered his hand on the table. 'Just tell me,' she said softly. 'Whatever it is. Just say it.'

David looked at her and felt nothing. That was the terrifying part — the absolute absence of emotion where there should have been love, or guilt, or something resembling humanity.

'I emptied our accounts,' he said. 'All of it. Two hundred thousand dollars. And I put it all on a crypto play that crashed this morning.'

Elena's face didn't change. She just kept looking at him, like she was seeing a stranger.

'Why?'

'Because I wanted to watch something burn,' David said. 'And I couldn't figure out how to set myself on fire without leaving a mess.'

She stood up, gathered her purse. 'You're not a bull in a china shop, David. You're just broken.'

The spinach was completely limp now, a dead thing on expensive china. David watched her walk away through the palm trees, toward the parking lot, toward a life that didn't include him.

He ordered another drink and waited for the check.