The Corporate Somnambulist

Maya stood before the office building, its glass façade rising like a brutalist pyramid in the morning haze. Her reflection showed a woman wearing her grandmother's velvet hat—a peculiar choice for a corporate Tuesday, but necessary. The funeral was this afternoon, and she'd refused to take it off, even after David had texted her at 2 AM asking if they were still meeting for coffee.

The elevator dinged. She stepped into her department, moving through the open floor plan like a zombie, eyes glazed from three nights of consecutive insomnia. Her colleagues shuffled past with matching dead eyes, all of them caught in the same corporate trance—breathing but not alive, present but somewhere else entirely. At 32, Maya had already achieved what her parents called success: a senior analyst position, a 401k, a recurring prescription for anxiety medication she didn't take.

Her phone buzzed. A photo from David: a sliced papaya on a plate, glistening in what looked like tropical sunlight. The caption read simply: "Remember this?"

She did. Costa Rica, two years ago. Before the promotion. Before the panic attacks became background noise. Before she'd forgotten what it felt like to want something, anything, beyond the next deadline.

David had left yesterday. His resignation letter had been brief, professional. She'd helped him pack his desk, they'd shared a bottle of wine, and he'd asked her to come with him. She'd said no—stable, sensible, responsible Maya, who made lists and hit quarterly targets and believed in things like career trajectories and five-year plans.

Now she stood in her office, surrounded by the walking dead of corporate America, wearing her grandmother's funeral hat, looking at a photograph of papaya in a dead woman's son's phone. And suddenly Maya understood: she wasn't waiting for the right time. She was already dead, just too busy to notice.

The hat came off first. Then the badge. Then her phone—David's number still glowing on the screen.

"Maya?" Her manager's voice from the doorway. "Everything alright?"

She turned toward him, really seeing him for the first time in three years. A middle-aged man with tired eyes, his own pyramid of responsibilities and regrets.

"No," she said, surprising herself. "But I think I'm about to be."