There was a knock at the door. Marshall got up and opened the door. He had invited an old friend over. Cody was on the other side of the door. It had been years since he had last hung out with Cody. At this point in his life though, Marshall didn’t have many people in his life who would actually take the time to come see him. He had stopped giving them the time of day long ago, they all responded the same way.

“Hey man. This is a pretty swanky place you’ve got,” Cody said.

“Yeah. Probably a little too much so. I think I might move out.”

Cody came in and sat down. The apartment was more put together than it had been in weeks. The book shelf was worse though. It was now void of most of the books. Marshall had been blazing through them. Sometimes more than one a week. He had never been much of a reader but having to spend so much time in the apartment changed that. Unemployment was his sentence and the apartment was his prison. The books provided the only escape for him. Those, and Fluke.

Fluke had moved his sleeping spot from the corner of the room to the back of the couch. He still didn’t come to Marshall, and he didn’t rub up against him, but he slept closer to him. That was something at least. Cody looked around at the apartment and could tell that much of it had been moved around. He already suspected that if Marshall was calling then something major had happened. People don’t just call out of the blue when everything is okay.

“So what’s new in life?” Cody asked.

Marshall cleaned up some clutter on his coffee table and moved it to the kitchen counter.

“I started reading a lot. And I lost my job.”

Cody laughed. He didn’t mean to but the order of which those two facts had come out seemed comical to him. Marshall smiled in response. He knew it was funny even if it was sad.

“Do you have any idea on what you want to do next? Like work wise?”

“Not really. I’ve been calling around but I don’t think I’ll be able to stay in the same field. My boss didn’t exactly like me and word got around that I’m poisonous.”

Marshall made a slight cringe after saying the word poisonous. He was a very matter of fact person when he said things. Even bad things about himself. That didn’t take the sting out of it when he heard his own words though.

“I’m sorry. That blows.”

“Yeah. It really does.”

The two of them waited in an awkward silence. Fluke broke it up with a whiny meow.

“He’s hungry. He doesn’t really like me. But he knows I’m the one that feeds him.”

Marshall walks over and grabs cat food from a high drawer. He fills Fluke’s bowl and returns to the living room.

“Has he always been that way since you got him?”

“I didn’t get him. I just got left with him.”

Cody nodded. No more needed to be said about it. He could devise how Marshall ended up with a cat he didn’t really want.

“So how are you? How have things been?” Marshall asked.

“Things have been good. Got married last year. Still renting but looking at houses. Hopefully next year we can find one. Works boring. But I don’t hate it so that’s a plus. Do you talk to any of the old crew?”

“No. You’re the first in a long time.”

Cody sat up. He had started to slouch into the couch without even noticing. He didn’t feel as though this was the place to get to comfortable. Even without the silence there was still an awkward feel in the air.

“Jen has two kids. Two girls. Lamar got way into cycling. He does crazy long marathons and basically rides his bike everywhere. I think he’s writing a book on how cycling saved his life. He was depressed for a long time but is doing way better now. Mike owns a bakery down on 24th.”

“It sounds like everyone is doing great.”

Marshall looked down at the ground as he said the last line. Cody got up. He had something to say. His demeanor changed in an instant.

“Marshall. You were always the most successful of us. You were dedicated to not losing at anything. Any game we played you had to be first. If someone had a pretty girlfriend, you had to have a prettier one. Hell, you were making 50,000 a year when the rest of us were still trying to get into a good college. I don’t know exactly why you called me but it feels like you were just trying to see if the rest of us were doing badly or not. You would have known how we were doing if you had just kept in touch. You dropped us once you felt that you needed to have the best, coolest, most successful friends. Now it looks like you don’t have anything. But don’t sit here and dwell on it. You’ve always had a good life. It looks like you’ve just lost for the first time and you just don’t know how to deal with it. I’m sorry that’s something you have to figure out now instead of when you were a kid, but you really need to get over it. There’s more to life than winning. You’ve still got more in this apartment than what a lot of us have. So please, stop looking down at the ground like someone ran over your cat.”

Marshall was stunned by Cody’s words. Cody was too. The words hadn’t just come from nowhere. They had been stuck inside him for years. Part of him knew he came here just to see what the great Marshall Fix needed. He knew it was bad and he wanted to see him in a bad place. Cody felt guilty after saying everything though. He had just kicked Marshall while he was down.

“The cat. It’s an inside cat only. So it couldn’t get hit by a car,” Marshall said.

“I’m sorry. You are going through some shit. I get that. But you have to deal with it just like the rest of us. You can always call if you need help. But don’t call just so you have someone to wallow to. Do your wallowing alone. Do it quick. Then get back out there.”

Cody walked out of the apartment. Marshall didn’t look back as he heard the door close. Fluke was meowing again. He wanted more food. He always wanted more. Marshall had been giving him more and more until he shut up. But now he thought that probably wasn’t a good idea. He would get fat. Plus, he really didn’t need all that food.