The Sphinx at Bull & Broad

The notification pinged on her iPhone at 3 AM — another market movement in Tokyo. Sarah rubbed her eyes, the blue light washing over her face in the empty penthouse. Three years ago, she would have been alarmed. Now, it was just the soundtrack of her life as senior analyst at Sterling Capital. The bull market had been running for so long that nobody remembered what a bear looked like. They'd forgotten to be afraid.

She padded to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out at the city grid below. Somewhere down there, in the labyrinth of streets, was a man she'd met three weeks ago at the gallery opening. Marcus. He'd looked at the abstract sculptures with something like genuine hunger, while she'd been calculating their investment potential. They'd ended up at his place, tangled in sheets, talking about everything except what mattered. He'd asked her what she actually wanted, deep down, and she'd laughed and kissed him to shut him up.

Her iPhone buzzed again. A message from Marcus: "Coffee? I know a place that's open."

Sarah hesitated, her thumb hovering over the screen. The sphinx outside the courthouse downtown — that bronze monstrosity the city had commissioned in some fit of public art fever — had always unsettled her. Its riddle wasn't written anywhere. You had to figure it out yourself: What breaks when you name it?

The bull market couldn't run forever. Marcus couldn't keep asking questions she wasn't ready to answer. She couldn't keep living at 3 AM, waiting for notifications from time zones where she'd never set foot.

She typed back: "Pick me up in twenty."

Downstairs, when Marcus pulled up in his beat-up Honda, she got in without speaking. The sphinx watched them go from its bronze perch, its human face locked in that eternal, knowing half-smile. The bull of Wall Street slept somewhere in the distance, unaware that its long rampage might finally be over.

"Where are we going?" Sarah asked.

"Somewhere the reception's bad," Marcus said, and reached for her hand across the center console.

For the first time in three years, Sarah turned off her iPhone and let it drop into her bag, dark and silent as a tomb.