Three Strikes in the Dark

The baseball sat on Marcus's desk, a paperweight for documents that no longer mattered. Signed by some player whose name Marcus couldn't remember, given by a father who'd stopped understanding his son somewhere around the divorce.

"You going to drink that?" Chloe asked, gesturing to the whiskey in his hand.

Marcus looked at the pool below his balcony—the apartment complex's amenity, currently reflecting a sky that refused to darken properly in the city's eternal artificial glow.

"It's not whiskey if it's from a mini bar," he said, setting it down untouched.

Chloe, perched on his desk, knocked a stack of files off the pyramid structure Marcus had built them into. Papers scattered like his career prospects.

"The firm's offering voluntary buyouts," she said, not asking.

Marcus nodded. "Same package as last time. Three months severance. Outplacement services."

"Pyramid scheme," Chloe said, touching the baseball. "Old partners at the top eating new associates at the bottom."

Marcus had started at the firm believing in the structure. Now, at thirty-five, he understood what David—that father who'd signed this baseball somewhere in another lifetime—had meant when he said the most dangerous lies were the ones you told yourself.

"I got a call," Chloe said. "A legal aid nonprofit. They can't pay much. But—"

Marcus looked at the pool again. He'd taken up swimming after the divorce, something meditative about the rhythm, the silence. Water didn't judge your failures.

"The pyramid's collapsing anyway," Marcus said. "Might as well not be underneath when it falls."

Chloe smiled. "You going to take the buyout?"

Marcus picked up the baseball, turned it in his hands.

"I'm going to take a swing," he said. "See where it lands."

Below them, the pool's automatic lights flickered on, illuminating the water's surface like a fresh start he hadn't seen coming.