The Geometry of Leaving

The **orange** sunset bled into the smog-choked Los Angeles sky as David sat in his Honda Civic, engine idling in the driveway. He'd been **running** from this conversation for three months, ever since the corporate restructure had revealed his department as a carefully constructed **pyramid** scheme of middle management and fabricated metrics.

At fifty-two, with a son who'd stopped speaking to him two years ago, and a wife who'd packed her things last Tuesday, David had taken to driving after work instead of going home. Sometimes he'd end up at the batting cages near the old **baseball** stadium his father used to take him to, the aluminum ping of bat against ball drowning out the silence in his head.

He'd met Sarah at a marketing conference in Palm Springs. She'd been standing beneath a **palm** tree, drinking something neon-colored, laughing at his joke about the air conditioning being cranked too high in hotel ballrooms. That was back when he still believed in upward mobility, before the bonuses stopped coming and the offshore calls began at 3 AM.

Now the house felt like a museum exhibit of a life that no longer fit him. Sarah's succulents on the windowsill, still thriving in her absence. His son's old Little League trophy, gathering dust on the bookshelf. The quarterly reports spread across the dining table like evidence at his own trial.

David turned off the engine. The neighborhood was quiet except for distant traffic, the sound of everyone going somewhere they needed to be. He rested his forehead against the steering wheel.

Tomorrow he'd call the lawyer. Tomorrow he'd update his resume. Tonight, he sat in the cooling dark and watched the last of the orange light surrender to the coming night, not running anymore, just finally, painfully still.