The Last Vitamin

The office tower rose like a glass pyramid against the smog-gray Chicago sky, its apex catching the dying light of 5 PM. Elena pressed her forehead against the cold window of her 42nd floor office, watching the tiny cars below—each one carrying someone home to something real.

"You coming to drinks?" Marcus stood in her doorway, loosening his tie. His eyes had that hungry look she'd been pretending not to see for months.

She reached for her vitamin C bottle instead, swallowing two dry. "Can't. The quarterly review."

"The pyramid scheme," he laughed, but it didn't reach his eyes. "We're all just climbing it anyway."

That was the thing about Marcus—he was a bull in every room he entered, charging through meetings, through lives, through whatever stood between him and what he wanted. Elena had admired it once, confused his aggression with ambition.

Her phone buzzed on the desk. Her husband's name lit up the screen.

The coiled ethernet cable on the floor caught her heel as she turned. She remembered tripping over it their first week here, spilling coffee across her blouse. Marcus had knelt to help her clean it up, his fingers lingering on her wrist.

Tonight, he'd kissed her in the server room. Just once, soft and terrible, between the humming racks.

"The market's bullish," he'd whispered against her neck. "We should ride it."

Now, the vitamin pills sat heavy in her stomach. She'd started taking them three years ago, when David got sick. When the doctor said "stress" and "time." When Marcus got promoted and she didn't.

Her phone buzzed again.

Elena looked at the glass pyramid outside, at Marcus waiting in her doorway, at the phone with David's name. The cable curled at her feet like a snake.

She picked up her bag.

"You know what," she said. "I think I'll skip that drink."