Pyramids of Salt

The corporate pyramid scheme brought us to Egypt—middle management from twelve countries, all pretending this wasn't a mandatory re-education camp for the redundantly ambitious. Sarah from Legal sat beside me at the pool bar, her palm resting on the sticky marble countertop, sweat beading at her hairline.

"They expect us to build pyramids of meaning out of absolute bullshit," she said, gesturing toward the conference center where our facilitator, a man named Bull who probably called himself a "thought leader" unironically, was no doubt preparing another PowerPoint on "synergistic alignment."

I'd known Sarah for three years. We weren't friends—we were survivors in the same ecosystem, trading eye rolls across boardroom tables, sharing war stories over lukewarm coffee. But something about the Egyptian heat, the way her silk blouse clung to her back, made me wonder if that was all we were.

"You know," she said, turning her hand over, studying the lines in her palm like she might find her exit strategy written there. "My grandmother read palms. Said she could see whole lives in these creases."

"What did she see in yours?"

"She stopped reading it when I was twelve." Sarah laughed, but it was sharp, not amused. "Said something changed. Said the future went dark."

Bull emerged from the conference center, his pink scalp gleaming under the merciless sun, clipboard in hand like a weapon. The pyramid of Giza rose in the distance—a monument to dead pharaohs who'd once convinced thousands that their labor meant something eternal. Some things never changed.

"You think he knows?" Sarah asked, watching him approach. "That we're all just waiting for the right moment to jump?"

I looked at her palm again, then at mine. "Your grandmother was wrong," I said. "The future didn't go dark. It just got smaller."

She smiled—really smiled—for the first time all week. "So did we."

When Bull reached our table, we ordered another round. Some pyramids are worth building, even if they're just made of salt and sand and the moments you steal back from the machine that wants to grind you down.