Citrus Compromise

The office therapy dog, a golden retriever named Buster, sensed it before I did. He stopped greeting Marcus at the door, instead offering a low growl whenever the young data analyst approached my desk. I should have paid better attention. At forty-seven, I'd grown complacent, popping vitamin supplements and imagining my seniority at the firm offered protection. I was wrong.

Marcus always arrived with an orange, peeling it slowly at his workstation. The scent would drift over to me—sharp, acidic, unmistakable. I used to find it grounding. Now, the smell of citrus makes my stomach knot.

The IT director called me in on a Tuesday. "Marcus has been thorough," he said, sliding a folder across his desk. "Three years of documentation. Your missed deadlines. Your 'strategic errors' during the merger. Even your medical appointments." He paused. "He's been building a case."

A spy in the cubicle next to mine. Not for a foreign government, but for a promotion I wasn't even planning to contest.

That afternoon, I watched Marcus peel another orange, his movements precise, almost surgical. He caught me staring and offered that practiced smile—the one that had charmed clients, the one that now made me understand how easily I'd been played.

"Everything okay, Tom?"

"Fine," I said. "Just admiring the view."

Buster appeared at my feet, pressing his warm weight against my leg. I rested my hand on his head, finding comfort in the one genuine thing left in that sterile building of glass and ambition.

I didn't fight it. Let him have the promotion, let him have the corner office, let him inherit the stress that would send him searching for his own vitamin bottles in another decade. Some battles aren't worth fighting. Some betrayals are just the cost of doing business in a world that rewards the hungry and discards the satisfied.

I packed my things that evening. Buster's handler gave me his card—said the dog needed a new home when he retired next year. I took it, thinking that some connections, unlike others, might actually be real.

The elevator doors closed on the orange-scented air of the twenty-third floor. I breathed out, finally, and didn't look back.