Vitamins in the Bull Market

The orange sunset burned through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Marcus's corner office, painting everything in that particularly aggressive shade of optimism that only exists in San Francisco. He swallowed his handful of vitamins—B-complex for stress, D3 for the hours he never saw sunlight, magnesium for the muscle tension that had permanently settled between his shoulder blades like a judgment.

"You're running yourself into the ground," Sarah had said three months ago, before she stopped returning his calls. "This isn't living, Marc. It's just delayed dying."

She was probably right. She usually was. That was the problem with having a friend who actually saw you.

The bull market had been roaring for three years, and Marcus had been riding it hard, his portfolio swelling while something inside him hollowed out. He made money moving money from one place to another, a digital shepherd of capital, and somewhere along the way he'd forgotten how to want anything that couldn't be quantified on a spreadsheet.

He stood up and stretched. His knees popped. Forty-one years old and his body was already negotiating its surrender.

The office was empty except for the cleaning crew, a Guatemalan couple who moved through the space like ghosts, their Spanish murmurs blending with the building's ambient hum. Marcus grabbed his gym bag. Running. That was the thing now. Five miles every morning, three more at night, as if he could pace his way out of his own life.

The elevator mirrored back a man in expensive clothes who looked like someone Marcus might have known once, in another life. The bull market had made him wealthy. It hadn't made him whole.

"Hey, Marcus." The security guard waved him through. "Late night again?"

He nodded, already checking his phone. Another notification. Another number moving up or down. He stepped out into the cooling air and began to run, his expensive shoes hitting the pavement in a rhythm that almost, almost felt like prayer.

An orange rolled out of a grocery bag someone had dropped near the curb. Marcus watched it bounce away, a bright sphere escaping into traffic, and for some reason it made him want to cry.

Instead he ran faster, toward nothing in particular, away from everything specific.