The Market We Make

The bull market had been charging for three years when Marcus finally stopped taking his vitamins. He'd been swallowing those fluorescent gel capsules since college—some inherited anxiety about wellness, about maintaining the machine. But the machine was already breaking.

His iPhone lay face-down on the mahogany conference table, vibrating. Again. Sarah from Compliance, probably. Or Elena. He'd stopped answering either of them two weeks ago.

"You're being reckless," his father had said over drinks that still tasted like gin and disappointment. "This bull won't run forever."

Marcus had laughed. "That's the point of bulls—they run until they can't."

Now the portfolio was down forty percent. The vitamin bottles sat unopened on his kitchen counter, alongside Elena's key ring she'd left behind. She'd collected coasters from dive bars, little circles of cardboard with worn edges and faded logos. Places they'd never go again.

His iPhone screen lit up: a notification from his trading app. Margin call.

He stood on his apartment balcony, twenty-three floors up, watching the city grid itself into evening. The vitamin deficiency headache throbbed behind his eyes. He'd read somewhere that the first symptom was numbness in the fingers.

Below him, traffic moved like blood through something enormous and unconscious. He thought about bulls—how they charged at things because their eyes were built to perceive movement, not shape. How the red cape was just a cape.

The phone vibrated again.

He picked it up. Elena had sent a picture: a pregnancy test, positive.

Marcus stood there until the screen went dark, feeling suddenly, violently alive—the bull finally finding something worth running toward.