The Glass Walls

Maya pressed her forehead against the cool window of her corner office on the 42nd floor, watching rain streak down the glass like tears she couldn't remember how to cry. The water outside blurred the city lights into bleeding watercolors—gold, red, blue—mirroring the way her life had dissolved into shades of compromise.

On her desk, beside her untouched coffee, swam the goldfish in its bowl. It had been a gift from Tom last Christmas, after their first affair had ended and before the second one began. "Like us," he'd whispered, "swimming in circles, forgetting everything every seven seconds."

She should have known then. Tom, who headed up Marketing while she ran Product Development. Tom, whose office was one floor above hers in the corporate pyramid—always climbing, always looking down.

The pyramid chart on her whiteboard had been there for three months. Her reorganization plan. Her ticket to the C-suite. Her betrayal of everyone who'd ever trusted her.

"It's just business," Tom had said last night, unbuttoning her blouse in the darkened conference room. But she'd seen the way he looked at her presentation earlier that day—calculating, cold. Like she was another resource to allocate.

The goldfish swam to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent repetition. Maya wondered what it would remember, if it could remember anything at all. The way Tom's hands felt against her skin? The way he'd congratulated her on the restructuring while sliding his hand up her thigh?

Or would it only remember the water—the endless, circling water that kept it alive but never free?

Maya picked up the fishbowl and carried it to the window. The rain had stopped, leaving the city sharp and clear below. Pyramid after pyramid of office buildings, all of them filled with people swimming in circles, forgetting and remembering, climbing and falling.

"Not for me," she whispered.

She set the bowl back on her desk, opened her laptop, and typed two words: I resign.

Then she picked up the fishbowl again and walked out, leaving the pyramid behind.