What the Street Knows

Marcus stood at the podium, his hands trembling around the laser pointer. The quarterly review meeting was in twenty minutes, and the data on his laptop showed a twelve percent decline in user engagement. His boss, a man who actually described himself as a "bull" in the market, had told Marcus to "make the numbers work" or find another job.

The apartment was silent when he returned that evening. Sarah had moved out two weeks ago, taking everything except her ginger tabby, which she'd abandoned with a text: "You keep him. I can't."

The cat — Marcus refused to learn its name, refused that intimacy — watched him from the top of the refrigerator. Its green eyes followed his movements with what felt like judgment. Sarah had left because Marcus had become something she didn't recognize: someone who lied for a living, who came home and couldn't talk about his day because his day was a series of carefully constructed falsehoods.

"You think I wanted this?" Marcus asked the cat. "You think I wanted to spend forty hours a week manufacturing reality?"

The cat blinked. Slowly. Deliberately.

Marcus opened a bottle of whiskey. His phone buzzed — a message from his boss: "Great presentation today. Really sold the vision. That's what I like about you, Marcus — you know how to ride the bull."

He laughed. The sound was ugly in the empty apartment.

Outside, a dog began to howl. Not a bark — a sustained, mournful sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep and broken. Marcus stepped onto his balcony, drink in hand, looking out at the city lights. The howling continued.

Down in the alleyway, he saw it: a scrawny creature, ribs visible, limping toward a dumpster. The dog stopped and looked up toward his balcony, as if it knew exactly where he stood. Then it threw its head back and howled again, a sound so raw and honest that Marcus felt something crack open in his chest.

The cat jumped onto the balcony railing, sat beside him, and watched the dog below.

"That's what it looks like," Marcus whispered. "That's what it looks like to be alive."

He set down the drink. He went back inside. He opened his laptop and drafted an email to his boss, then stopped and deleted it. Not yet. But soon.

The cat rubbed against his leg, purring, and for the first time since Sarah left, Marcus didn't pull away.