Poolside Bullseye

The fluorescent hum of the office cafeteria's old television set Marco's teeth on edge. Cable news droned in the background as he lined up his shot on the pool table, the worn green felt beneath his fingers the only familiar thing left in this godforsaken company. Three rounds of layoffs in six months will do that to a man—make him cling to the small rituals like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.

His boss, Darren—the man everyone called "The Bull" behind his back for his stubborn insistence on "disruptive synergy" whatever that meant—had already cleaned out half the department. Marco's job hung by a thread thinner than the ethernet cables snaking across the server room floor.

"You gonna take that shot or stare at it all day?" Darren's voice came from behind him. The Bull had appeared like some corporate specter, his suit too expensive for a Tuesday afternoon, his smile too practiced.

Marco straightened up. The truth was, he wasn't thinking about the shot. He was thinking about the email he'd drafted that morning—the one about leaving everything behind. About finally cutting the cable that tethered him to this fluorescent purgatory. At forty-two, he'd spent half his life waiting for the right moment to actually live.

"Actually," Marco said, setting the pool cue on the table's edge. "I think I'm done."

Darren laughed, but it died when Marco didn't join in. "What do you mean, done? We've got the Q3 targets—"

"No." Marco felt something light and wild expanding in his chest, the same feeling he'd had when he'd walked away from his wedding seven years ago. "I mean with all of it. The pool. The targets. The cable." He gestured vaguely at everything—the television, the fluorescent lights, the entire constructed reality of corporate existence.

He walked past Darren, past the muted television still broadcasting its careful lies, toward the door. Outside, it was raining. He didn't have an umbrella. He didn't have a plan. But for the first time in twenty years, he was finally, gloriously free.