The Betting Pool

The office betting pool had been running since February, the numbers carefully tracked in a shared spreadsheet that Marcus thought nobody else knew about. When'll she go? ranged from 'before Memorial Day' to 'she'll outlast us all.'

Elena stood in the doorway of her office — her office, still, for another hour — wearing the orange silk scarf her mother had left her in the will. It was too bright against her gray suit, too vibrant for a Tuesday morning termination, but she needed the armor today.

"Elena, please sit." Gary's spinach was stuck between his front teeth. She stared at it while he explained the restructure, the realignment, the corporate speak that meant 'you're fifty-five and expensive.' She thought about Barnaby, her elderly arthritic dog, and the pet insurance she'd just let lapse to save money. The vet had warned her last week: his heart was failing, gradually, a slow tide going out.

"I understand," she said, and she did. The orange scarf felt suddenly heavy, a noose of silk.

The pool had been for $250. She'd seen the file on Melanie's desk once, accidentally. Her name on line seven. Three people had bet on this exact week.

She packed her box. A photo of Barnaby as a puppy, his black fur gleaming. The plant, dead leaves curling like the spinach in Gary's teeth. The retirement mug from twenty years of service.

At home, Barnaby lifted his head from the rug, thumped his tail twice. She sat on the floor beside him, her orange scarf still knotted at her neck, and waited. The afternoon light moved across the floorboards like something that used to be water, before the drought, before the pool was drained and filled with concrete and painted over with numbers nobody remembered anymore.

She'd won $250 in the betting pool without placing a bet. That was something. That would buy — she did the math — exactly twelve days of Barnaby's heart medication. She'd tell him it was a signing bonus from somewhere else. He wouldn't know the difference. He was just glad she was home.