Three Strikes at Midnight

The fox appeared at midnight, darting across Marcus's manicured lawn while I leaned against his patio railing, third glass of wine in hand. It paused, vapor rising from its coat in the November chill, and watched me with eyes that seemed to know everything.

"You're staring again," Marcus said from behind me, his voice rough with that particular exhaustion married men reserve for their mistresses. "What do you see out there?"

"A fox," I said. "Beautiful. Wild."

"The neighbors complain about them. They get into the trash."

"At least they're free," I replied, perhaps too bitterly.

The truth was, I envied that fox. I was twenty-eight years old and already owned by three entities: the consulting firm that paid me six figures to infiltrate competitors, the antidepressants that kept me functional, and this man who would never leave his wife.

My father had loved baseball—coached my brother's team until the divorce, until he drank himself into an early grave. He'd taught me that everyone gets three strikes. Three chances to make things right. I'd been counting mine ever since.

Strike one: dropping out of law school.

Strike two: this affair, now in its eighteenth month.

The third strike loomed.

"We could go swimming," Marcus suggested, as if water could wash away the pretense. His pool was heated year-round, another luxury I couldn't afford but had grown accustomed to.

"Not tonight."

"Eleanor, you've been distant lately. Is something wrong?"

"I'm fine."

But I wasn't. Tomorrow I would report to my firm's partners that Marcus's company, the one I'd been hired to infiltrate, had developed a revolutionary encryption algorithm. The information would bury his startup. I'd been the spy in his house for six months, sleeping in his bed while stealing his secrets.

The fox vanished into the darkness.

"Three strikes," I whispered.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just something my father used to say."

Marcus touched my shoulder, his fingers warm and familiar and entirely misplaced. I realized then that I'd already used my third strike. The game had ended while I was busy pretending to play.

"I should go," I said, setting down the wine glass. "I have an early morning tomorrow."

He didn't ask why. He never did.

As I walked to my car, I imagined the fox watching from somewhere in the darkness, and for the first time in years, I wanted to be something wild and untamed myself. Something that couldn't be owned by anyone. But the door to my Honda Civic clicked shut with that same familiar sound of surrender, and I drove home to wait for dawn.