Corporate Agriculture

The spinach salad sat untouched on Mara's desk, wilting under the fluorescent hum of the thirty-second floor. She adjusted her hat—she'd started wearing one to interviews after the comment about her 'looking tired' at thirty-seven—and stared at the organizational pyramid on the whiteboard. Her name had been moved two tiers down.

'Full of shit, the whole thing,' Jeremy whispered, leaning against her doorframe. He'd been with the firm twenty years, since before it became this pyramid scheme of ego and attrition. 'They're gonna hand your division to that bull from Chicago.'

The cat, a stray she'd secretly been feeding in the alley for six months, appeared at her window that evening as she packed her box. Its yellow eyes watched her through the glass, that assessing weight that made her feel both seen and exposed. She'd never told anyone about the cat—how she'd named it Bull after the market that had destroyed her father's retirement, how it was the only living thing that didn't want something from her.

The spinach in her salad had been local, sustainable, expensive—everything she was supposed to care about now. But all she could think about was how her father had grown spinach in their backyard, how he'd explained photosynthesis to her while she pulled weeds, how he'd killed himself when the second crash wiped him clean.

She set her hat on her desk, smoothing the brim. The security guard would be coming soon. Outside, Bull the cat waited, and beyond that, something that wasn't this pyramid of ambition and compromise and carefully curated sustainability.

Mara left the spinach. She took the hat. She stepped out into the night where the real bull—the market, the madness, whatever came next—was already waiting to be faced.