The Options Desk

Marcus stood on the balcony of the Coral Springs Marriott, his palm resting against the warm glass. Below, the pool area was empty at 3 AM. He'd been up for twenty hours, running on caffeine and adrenaline and the kind of existential dread that comes from watching your net worth drop sixty percent in a week.

The door slid open behind him. "You too?"

Tom. His friend. His colleague. The guy who'd convinced him to leave the trading floor and join this crypto startup two years ago. Tom looked terrible — his skin gray, eyes hollow, movements jerky and unnatural. A zombie in a bespoke suit.

"Can't sleep," Marcus said.

"Yeah." Tom leaned against the railing. "Remember when we thought we were geniuses? When the bull run felt like it would never end?"

Marcus laughed bitterly. "Geniuses don't lose four million dollars in a quarterly cycle."

They'd both been analytics guys at Goldman, brilliant with numbers but desperate for something more. The startup had promised freedom, upside, the chance to build something real instead of just moving money around for faceless clients. Now they were staring down layoffs, their equity effectively worthless, the whole house of cards collapsing while regulators circled like sharks.

"My kid asked me today what I actually do," Tom said quietly. "I couldn't explain it. I'm thirty-five years old and I realized I don't know how to do anything that matters."

Marcus thought about the baseball glove gathering dust in his closet. He'd played Division III in college, loved the simplicity of it — you hit the ball, you run, you catch. None of this derivative-of-a-derivative existential nightmare. None of the waking up at 3 AM wondering if you're about to become a headline in the Wall Street Journal.

"My dad's friend runs a construction company in Jersey," Marcus said finally. "He offered me a job last summer. I laughed in his face."

Tom turned to look at him, something like hope flickering in his dead eyes.

"You think he's still hiring?"