Corporate Espionage & Salads

The spinach was always wilting by noon. That's what Elena noticed first about Marcus—he brought the same sad salad every Tuesday, the leaves already surrendering to gravity. They'd been lunch friends for three years, their routine as predictable as the fluorescent buzz overhead.

'You should try orange segments,' she said one day, watching him poke at the green mound. 'Vitamin C helps with... everything.' She waved her hand vaguely, thinking of the supplements her mother swore by, the little pills that promised to fix exhaustion, heartbreak, the accumulated weight of being thirty-five and alone in a city that never stopped moving.

Marcus laughed. 'I'll add that to my list of things to start doing tomorrow.'

Tomorrow never came for a lot of things. Elena knew this well. She'd been putting off leaving James for two years, putting off asking for that promotion, putting off the life she actually wanted. Instead she ate lunch with Marcus and talked about projects that didn't matter and colleagues they both pretended to like.

The corporate spy scandal broke on a Wednesday. Elena found out when security escorted her past Marcus's empty desk, his salad still sitting there, the spinach finally dead. He'd been selling their prototypes to a competitor for eighteen months. Her department's work, her late nights, her sacrificial weekends—he'd packaged it all and handed it over.

She sat on a bench outside the building that evening, an orange in her pocket she'd bought on impulse. The peel gave way under her thumbnail, releasing a burst of citrus that made her eyes water. She ate it section by section, letting the juice run down her fingers, sticky and honest.

Her phone buzzed. James, asking what she wanted for dinner. Her boss, wanting to know if she'd heard the news. Her mother, reminding her about vitamins.

Elena wiped her hands on her skirt and watched the building's lights flicker on. She wasn't angry at Marcus. She was something worse—she was impressed. He'd chosen something, however wrong. He'd made a move. Meanwhile, she was still sitting here, consuming Vitamin C and calculating the risks of staying in a marriage that had been dead longer than Marcus's spinach.

She stood up and threw the orange peel into the trash. Then she called James. 'I'm not coming home,' she said. 'Actually, there's something I need to tell you.'