The Geometry of Goodbye

The corporate pyramid scheme presentation dragged into its third hour, and Marcus felt himself becoming a zombie—not the flesh-eating kind, but the corporate variety: eyes glazed, soul suspended, nodding at intervals while his mind executed a slow, systematic death.

He thought about David. His friend from college who'd played minor league baseball until a rotator cuff injury shattered that particular pyramid of ambition. They'd met at a pickup game, Marcus in accounting major drag, David with that golden arm and that laugh—god, that laugh like sunshine breaking through storm clouds.

"You okay, Marcus?" Sheila from HR whispered, startling him back to the sterile conference room. The presenter—some twenty-something in a suit too expensive for his entry-level position—gestured enthusiastically at a triangular projection on the screen. "The bottom tier supports the top! That's how we all WIN!"

David would have found this hilarious. They'd spent countless nights at that dive bar near the old ballpark, drinking cheap whiskey while David reconstructed failed games pitch by pitch. "I had him, Marc. Had him staring at a curveball, and then—" snap of fingers "—my shoulder just gave. Like my body decided to quit without consulting me."

The pyramid on screen morphed into a 3D structure, rotating slowly, hypnotic. Marcus's phone buzzed—a notification from David's sister. *Found his old baseball card collection. Want anything?*

He'd been ghosting her calls for three months. Since the funeral. Since the autopsy report showed opioids in David's system—enough to kill a horse, enough to make a rotator cuff injury feel like nothing at all.

"Marcus?" Sheila again.

"Fine," he said, the word tasting like ash. "Just... thinking about a friend."

The presenter beamed. "That's the spirit! Networking is friendship! That's what makes this pyramid WORK!"

Marcus stood up. His legs felt foreign, unfamiliar. He walked out of the conference room, past the bewildered presenter, out of the building entirely. His phone burned in his pocket. He needed to call David's sister back. He needed to tell her yes, he wanted the baseball cards, he wanted everything, he wanted to sit with her and remember the way David's laugh sounded before the pain got too loud.

Some pyramids were meant to be climbed, he realized. Others were meant to bury their dead.