Lightning in Palm Springs

The readings weren't supposed to be accurate. That was the joke between Elena and me—we were two corporate trainers sweating in Palm Springs, teaching desperate people how to recruit other desperate people into our nutrition pyramid scheme. "It's not a pyramid," Elena would say during presentations, "it's a reverse-funnel opportunity matrix."

But when the old woman traced the **lightning** fork across my **palm** and said "You'll lose everything that matters," I laughed it off. Tipped her twenty bucks.

My **iPhone** buzzed in my pocket—Greg, our regional director. "Bull shit," I muttered, though Greg couldn't hear me. He wanted me to close another recruit by midnight. Some single mother who'd already maxed three credit cards buying starter kits.

"You're breaking my heart, Greg," I told him later at the hotel bar.

"That's what hearts are for." He gestured at the worksheet in front of me. "Show me the numbers."

The **bull** market in nutritional supplements was endless, or so we claimed. But my downline was collapsing. People were waking up. Elena had stopped returning my texts. The desert lightning forked outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the spreadsheet of names I'd brought into this mess.

"You're thinking too much," Greg said, pushing another drink toward me. "That's your problem."

I thought about the old woman's prediction. About Elena's empty chair at orientation yesterday. About my mother's credit card debt she'd never admitted to until last week.

The lightning struck closer.

"I'm done," I said.

Greg's face hardened. "You'll never work in this industry again."

I walked out into the desert heat, palm trees silhouetted against purple twilight. My phone died somewhere between the hotel and the interstate. I kept walking toward the lightning, toward whatever came after losing everything that never really mattered at all.