Electric Currents

The bull statue in the corporate lobby glared at Elena with bronze eyes as she carried her lunch to the rooftop garden. Thirty-seven years old and still trying to prove herself to men twice her age who still thought authenticity was a weakness.

She'd started bringing spinach salads every day since the heart scare—not that anyone noticed. The plastic container sweated condensation like she did during presentations where Richard, her boss, would interrupt her mid-sentence to explain something she'd just explained.

Today she'd had enough. The quarterly review was in two hours. Richard would take credit for her campaign again. He always did.

From the rooftop, she could see the storm rolling in across the harbor. Dark water churned below, and somewhere out there, lightning split the sky—a jagged wound of white that made the hairs on her arms stand up. She remembered her mother telling her that lightning never strikes the same place twice, but her mother had been wrong about so many things.

Her phone buzzed. Richard: "We need to discuss your attitude before the meeting."

Elena watched the water. She thought about jumping—just the thought, nothing more. The way people think about what they'd say to a dying lover, except hers was already dead, killed by the same corporate machine that now wanted to discuss her attitude.

Then she saw it: a homeless man on the sidewalk below, sitting on a bench, eating something from a can, completely unconcerned with the storm, with corporate politics, with proving anything to anyone. He looked up at the sky as lightning flashed again, and he laughed.

Elena set down her uneaten spinach. She typed back: "My attitude is that I quit."

The bull glared as she walked past it, head high, not knowing whether she'd just destroyed her life or finally started living it. The rain began to fall, and she didn't run for cover.