What the Cat Saw

The cat appeared the summer everything between Marcus and me began to curdle. She was a ragged calico who showed up at the edge of the pool one Tuesday, watching us with amber eyes that seemed to know too much. Marcus named her Bull—said she had the temperament of a charging beast, all hiss and fury whenever I approached.

We were twenty-six then, working the same entry-level finance jobs, convinced we were on the precipice of greatness. Marcus had a theory about the market, something about riding the bull before the inevitable bear, leveraging every connection, every cable of influence we could tug. He'd been raised by sharks; I'd been raised by people who believed in playing fair.

The office pool was his idea. Five of us, each throwing in thousands, betting on which startups would IPO before year's end. Marcus insisted he had inside information—a cousin at a venture firm, whispers over cable TV business shows, patterns he swore he could see before anyone else.

"Trust me," he kept saying, by the pool as Bull watched us. "I've never steered you wrong."

He didn't steer me wrong. He steered me into a scheme that would've ruined me if I'd followed through. The cousin didn't exist. The inside information was fabrication. Marcus had been playing all of us, collecting our pool money to fund his own mounting gambling debts.

I found out three months later, from a mutual friend who'd noticed discrepancies. Confronted Marcus at his apartment. He didn't deny it—just laughed, said that's how the world worked, said I'd understand someday.

I haven't spoken to him in seven years. Sometimes I wonder what happened to Bull. Sometimes I wonder if Marcus ever thinks about that summer by the pool, when he still had a friend who would've trusted him with anything.

The cat knew all along, I think. That's why she only hissed at me—she could see I was about to lose everything.