The Corporate Retreat

Sarah stood at the edge of the conference room, watching her colleagues form a human pyramid during the trust-building exercise. At forty-two, she was the oldest person in the room by a decade, and she'd stopped pretending these exercises built anything but resentment.

The facilitator, a buoyant woman named Mindy who couldn't be older than twenty-five, clapped her hands. "Remember, what we learn here about teamwork translates directly to the quarterly goals!"

Sarah excused herself to the buffet table, where someone had thoughtfully provided a spinach salad—apparently wellness was now a KPI. She poked at the wilted greens with a plastic fork, thinking about the promotion she'd been passed over for again. They'd given it to Tyler instead. Tyler, who called everyone "fam" and sent emails at 2 AM like it was a personality trait.

"You look like you're plotting murder," a voice said beside her.

It was Marcus, the CFO's assistant. They'd had a brief thing three years ago, back when she still believed office romance wasn't a pyramid scheme of emotional devastation.

"Just thinking about how we're all going to die alone anyway," she said, surprising herself. "So there's that."

Marcus laughed, startled. "God, you haven't changed. Still the only person here with a spine."

He had a small piece of spinach stuck between his front teeth. She considered telling him, then decided against it. Let him discover it later, during his presentation on synergistic opportunities.

"My wife left me," he said suddenly. "Last month. She said I was married to this place."

Sarah looked at him—really looked at him. He'd gone gray at the temples. There were lines around his eyes she didn't remember.

"I'm sorry," she said, and meant it.

"You know what the crazy part is?" He gestured toward the window, where a small dog was chasing a fox across the corporate campus lawn—two animals playing a game of survival that made more sense than anything happening inside. "I can't even remember what I wanted before all this. Before I started climbing."

"You wanted to write," she remembered. "That memoir about your grandmother."

He stared at her. "You remember that?"

"I remember a lot of things, Marcus."

The dog had given up and was trotting back toward the building, tail still wagging. The fox paused at the tree line, looking back with eyes that seemed to know something they didn't.

"I should go," Marcus said, but he didn't move. "Are you happy, Sarah?"

She thought about the email from her mother about settling down. The novel she hadn't touched in five years. The way she smiled less now than she had at thirty.

"I'm working on it," she said.

"Me too," he said, and finally, she reached out and removed the spinach from his teeth with her napkin, the most intimate thing she'd done in years. "Better now?" she asked, and he laughed, really laughed, like he used to, before the pyramid got them all.