Corporate Palmistry

The spinach salad sat untouched on Maya's desk, wilting under the fluorescent hum of the 14th floor. Her laptop screen flickered—a loose ethernet cable, she thought, not bothering to fix it. Some things just decayed naturally.

"You're not eating," David said, leaning against her doorframe. Three years of marriage, and still he knew her habits better than she did. "Interview in twenty. You need energy."

Maya looked at her palm—there was that tremor again, subtle but undeniable. Stress, the doctor said. But stress didn't explain the dreams about falling, or how she'd started forgetting words mid-sentence. "Not hungry."

"The merger announcement," he pressed. "It's huge for us. Both of us." He reached out, his palm against her cheek. "You're shaking."

She pulled away. "The cable's loose again. Can't connect to the server."

"Maya."

"What if I don't want this?" The words escaped before she could reconsider them. "The promotion. The bigger office. This life we've assembled like IKEA furniture,看起来 fine but rickety underneath."

David's expression shifted—hurt, then recognition, then something sadder. "You've been talking to someone."

"No. Just thinking. About how we got here. About whether we even like each other anymore."

He laughed, bitter and quiet. "You want to do this now? Before your career-making interview?"

"Because it's never a good time, is it?" She stood, grabbed her spinach container. "I'm going to the cafeteria. If I still have a job when I get back, we can talk."

The interview went spectacularly wrong. She couldn't focus. Kept thinking about David's palm against her cheek—warm, familiar, but somehow distant. Like he was already gone.

Back at her desk, a note waited. No explosive declarations. Just: "Your spinach is in the fridge. I fed the cat. I'll stay with Mark tonight."

Maya sat down, plugged in the cable. The connection held. Screen bright, server humming, everything working perfectly. She opened the spinach container and took a bite. It tasted like endings—bitter, cold, and absolutely necessary.