Everything Falls Down

Sarah had been running for three years — from the foreclosure, the divorce, the gnawing suspicion that she'd wasted her twenties climbing a corporate pyramid that didn't exist. Now she parked her sedan behind the Luxor, the black glass pyramid towering against the Vegas dawn like some middle manager's wet dream of upward mobility.

Her ex-husband's golden retriever, Buster, whimpered from the passenger seat. She'd promised to watch him for the weekend, but Richard had moved to Phoenix with someone named Chelsea who did yoga and owned a townhouse. Buster was the last tether to a life that no longer wanted her.

"It's just for tonight," she told the dog, though she wasn't sure who she was trying to convince.

The poker tournament started in forty minutes. Sarah had scraped together twelve hundred dollars — her entire emergency fund, more or less. If she won, she could keep the apartment. If she lost, she'd drive west until the car died or she did.

She checked her phone again. No messages. Not from her mother, who'd stopped calling after Sarah missed her niece's birthday. Not from Mara, her former best friend, now too busy with her startup and her conscious uncoupling to notice Sarah sliding off the map.

Her palm was sweating against the steering wheel. She thought about Richard's voice the last time they'd spoken: *"You always run, Sarah. That's your pattern. You run before anything can get too real."*

She opened the door and stepped into the blistering heat. Buster scrambled after her, nails clicking on asphalt. The pyramid's spotlight swept across the parking lot like God's own interrogation lamp, catching dust motes in its artificial beam.

Somewhere inside that pyramid, someone was about to lose everything. She hoped it wouldn't be her. But God, she was tired of running.