The Sunset Trading Floor

Marcus swallowed the **vitamin** D supplement with lukewarm coffee, his reflection in the trading floor's glass wall showing a man who'd aged a decade in three months. The merger announcement had been delayed again, and his portfolio—weighted heavily in biotech—was bleeding.

"You're chasing the wrong **bull**," Sarah had said that morning, not looking up from her yoga mat. She'd taken up wellness the way Marcus took up risky positions: with compulsive intensity. Her new guru preached detachment. Marcus's bonus depended on attachment.

Now, at 4 PM, the CNBC ticker blazed amber across the trading floor. His screen showed the **orange** line of his flagship fund cratering. The junior analyst, a kid named Kavi who still wore his college fraternity ring, hovered nearby.

"Boss, the FDA memo—"

"I saw it."

Marcus's phone buzzed. Sarah: *packing dinner for the shelter. be late.* She'd stopped asking about his trades. Stopped asking anything, really.

He thought of their last real conversation, weeks ago, on a weathered bench near the old **baseball** diamond where they'd met during grad school. She'd been reading; he'd been nursing a gin and tonic after failing yet another startup pitch. They'd talked until dusk, that hopeful orange-gold light that makes everything look possible.

Now the same light flooded his office, making the dust motes dance. He opened his trading terminal. Kavi was still watching, waiting for orders.

"Unload the position," Marcus said. "All of it."

"But the committee—"

"The committee can eat the loss." He pressed execute, watching years of work liquidate in seconds. The orange line flattened, then dipped below his break-even.

He stood up, gathered his things. The trading floor buzzed behind him, screens flashing, money changing hands in the abstract economy that had consumed his twenties and half his thirties.

Outside, the city burned gold in late afternoon. He messaged Sarah: *done. coming home.*

The street vendor sold him a **orange** juice—fresh squeezed, pulp floating thick. He drank it standing there, watching traffic, the bitter-sweet unfamiliarity of doing something because it was what he wanted, not what he thought he should.

The **bull** market would resume tomorrow. Someone else would make the killing. For the first time in a decade, Marcus wasn't chasing it.