The Cascade

Martin's Rolex was running three seconds fast, and that's how he knew Emma had already left him.

Not the encrypted phone. Not the therapist appointments. Three hours, twice a week, always Tuesdays and Thursdays. Not how she'd started showering before coming home, water washing away evidence. Not the way she'd stopped wearing the Cartier necklace, claimed it felt heavy. Not her sudden fascination with modern art, those Mapplethorpe photographs, that documentary about Gertrude Stein she'd watched three times. Not even the way she'd started fucking him with her eyes clenched shut, hands gripping sheets like she was drowning in something deeper than their California king.

It was the watch. Eighteen grand of Swiss perfection that hadn't lost a second in five years suddenly racing ahead.

He'd noticed it this morning. Three seconds fast. By lunch, four.

Martin sat at table nineteen, watching time commit perjury on his wrist. The restaurant bloomed around him like a bruise in reverse, all amber and gold where it should be purple and black. Through floor-to-ceiling glass, Manhattan spread its tarot cards: tower after tower of illuminated windows, each one a fortune being told backward, every light a lie someone paid cash for.

Ting.

Fork met porcelain. Someone's Yale tuition dissolving into foie gras.

The waiter drifted past, practiced smile, mortgage in his eyes. Across the room, a redhead in Versace priced him with her eyes.

Martin blinked once. Deliberate.

She looked away.

Emma was seventeen minutes late. At eight hundred an hour, his billable rate, she'd already burned through a decent dinner. Not that she'd know. She'd been eating elsewhere lately. With someone else. Some banker, probably. Some suit who whispered stock tips between her thighs.

The waiter approached with the measured steps of an oncologist carrying test results. "Another Macallan, sir?"

Martin nodded at the empty chair, leather still holding the shape of her lies from three nights ago.

The scotch arrived. Three ice cubes dissolving in amber. He sipped, smoke and oak, twelve years of waiting for nothing in particular.

His phone lit up:

Traffic. Five more minutes. Promise.

Traffic in Midtown at 8:30. Sure. Like saying water's wet.

Martin lifted his wrist, studied the second hand sweeping around the face. The weight felt wrong, had felt wrong for weeks. The bracelet sat different. The clasp clicked wrong.

The phone password had started his suspicion. six digits that weren't their anniversary. Then the gym she never used. Credit card charges, always lunch for two. But it was the therapist that sealed it. Dr. Alexandra something. Three hours, sometimes four. What kind of therapy took four hours?

He'd checked their accounts yesterday. Forty thousand, bled out in neat transactions. Structured to avoid attention. Professional.

At table twelve, newlyweds shared chocolate soufflé, her ring throwing light like a cry for help. Six months, Martin thought. Maybe five.

Emma materialized, Balenciaga blazer over practiced chaos. Hair precisely imperfect. Her heels hammered marble: click-click-click.

The apology came pre-packaged, probably rehearsed in the Uber. Her perfume arrived late: Chanel No. 5 cut with something else... another man's scent clinging to her hair.

"Don't." Martin lifted his glass. "I ordered the Barolo."

"You're too good to me."

The smile she deployed could've been in MoMA. Portrait of a Marriage, #31: The Lying Wife. Perfect teeth, dead eyes, lips that had kissed someone else four hours ago. He could still see the beard burn on her neck, faint as a watermark.

The sommelier appeared, pouring wine the color of old blood under chandelier light.

"How was your day?" Emma asked.

Martin studied her. Still devastating at thirty-two, silk-black hair falling past shoulders he'd kissed a thousand times, green eyes that went gold in candlelight, that mouth painted burgundy to match the wine. Her collarbone caught shadows like an invitation. Three years of marriage and she could still make his blood redirect itself, even now, even knowing. Pupils dilated wide despite the light. That mark on her neck again, and suddenly he could see it: Emma beneath another man, back arched, that same expression she used to save for him. The image made him nauseous and hard at the same time, his body a traitor to his rage.

Her fingers found the wine glass, gripping the stem like she could read his thoughts.

"Productive." He let the word settle. "Closed the Hanscom deal. Twenty million."

Her eyes flickered. Money still registered, even now.

"Beautiful watch," he said, nodding at her wrist. "The Cartier I gave you."

"You notice everything."

"Almost everything." Martin lifted his own wrist. "Notice anything different?"

Emma's face stayed perfectly still. Too still.

"Your Rolex?"

"My Rolex." He unclasped it, set it on the white tablecloth between them. "Eighteen thousand dollars. Serial number ending in 7829. Purchased at Tourneau, June ninth, three years ago."

She took a sip of wine. Slow.

"Except this one ends in 3346."

"Martin—"

"Good replica. Swiss movement. Probably cost three grand." He turned the watch over. "The weight's off by twelve grams. The crown doesn't screw down smooth. The second hand sweeps instead of ticks. Details."

Emma set down her glass. "How long have you known?"

"Suspected for a week. Confirmed this morning when I called Tourneau." He picked up the watch. "They have no record of this serial number."

The waiter appeared with appetizers. Scallops for him. Tartare for her. "Will there be anything else?"

Martin looked at Emma. Three years of shared addresses and separate dreams.

"We're perfect."

Alone again, the air between them crystallized.

"You needed the money," he said.

"Yes."

"For him."

Emma swallowed, gave him a look that might have been pity. A sad smile touched her lips. "Her."

Martin kept his face still. Reached for his scotch. Steady hand. No tremor. Years of hostile takeovers had taught him how to swallow surprises without choking.

"Alexandra. My therapist." Emma's voice steadied. "I needed the money for us. For after."

"The forty thousand."

"Fifteen for the watch. Twenty-five for the apartment. Brooklyn." She met his eyes. "I kept the receipts."

Martin cut into his scallop. Butter bled onto porcelain.

"You could have asked for a divorce."

"With our prenup?" Emma's smile turned surgical. "I'd get nothing. You made sure of that."

"So you stole from me."

"I liquidated an asset." She lifted the fake Rolex. "You still have a watch. It still tells time."

"It runs fast."

"Everything about us runs fast, Martin. Fast cars, fast money, fast marriage." She set the watch down. "Even our endings are efficient."

At the bar, a man in Tom Ford had stopped checking his phone. Third whiskey. Neat. No ice. No dilution. No hope.

"How long?" Martin asked.

"Since January. Since you fucked that analyst at Davos."

"You knew?"

She nodded slowly. Let that be enough.

Martin signaled for the check. It arrived: $1,847.63 for two people to admit they'd been robbing each other all along.

"I'll get it," Emma said. "One last time on the Amex. Before you cancel it." She signed with the same flourish she'd used on their marriage certificate.

Outside, rain turned the city into something liquid and forgettable. Valet runners sprinted through puddles, fetching German engineering for people who'd forgotten what weather felt like.

Emma waited under the awning, rain misting her face. Her mascara held. Professional to the end.

"The funny thing," she said, "is that we're both relieved."

"Relief is just grief that hasn't hit yet."

Her Uber pulled up—anonymous white Toyota, escape vehicle for the modern age.

She touched his cheek once. Cold fingers, practiced goodbye.

"Take care, Martin."

Not "goodbye." Not "see you at the lawyers." Something in between.

She folded herself into the car. He watched the taillights bleed into traffic, heading east toward Brooklyn, toward Alexandra, toward a future without him in it.

Martin stood in the rain, sixty-thousand-dollar suit soaking through. The fake Rolex on his wrist kept running fast, four seconds now, probably five by morning. By next week it would be minutes ahead, by next month it would be telling time from some future where none of this mattered.