Glass Walls

The papaya sat on the counter, its mottled yellow-orange skin softening in the afternoon heat. Same kind he'd bought every Friday for three years. Some rituals outlast the people who inspire them.

Marcus watched the goldfish — what was its name? Barnaby? — drift listlessly in its bowl on Elena's desk. The fish had survived Elena's funeral, her promotion, their affair. Now it would outlast her career too.

"It's not what you think," she'd said yesterday, her hand trembling as she reached for the papaya knife. "Everyone's doing it. The whole team."

The corporate pyramid scheme wasn't even sophisticated. Sell wellness supplements to your elderly clients. Recruit them to sell to their friends. Take a cut at every level. Marcus had found the spreadsheets on her shared drive — names, ages, "investment potential." His mother's name was there, circled in green. "High yield."

He should have reported it immediately. That was the protocol. But Elena had been his friend since they were twenty-two, drinking cheap wine in his apartment while she complained about her narcissistic ex. She'd held him when his father died. She'd introduced him to his wife.

Now Sarah wanted to know why he was accessing Elena's files. Why he'd deleted three emails from compliance. Why surveillance had caught him meeting her outside a coffee shop yesterday.

"I'm not asking you to spy on her," Sarah had said this morning, her voice flat. "I'm asking if you knew."

He hadn't answered. The question wasn't whether he'd known — he'd known for weeks. The question was when friendship became complicity.

The goldfish surfaced, gulping air. Elena had joked once that the fish was the only honest thing in the office. It couldn't lie, couldn't scheme, couldn't pretend to care about people while mining their savings for a promotion.

Marcus reached for the papaya. The knife slid through flesh like surrender. Some rituals, he realized, should end with the people who inspire them.