The Layoff Pool

Elena didn't tell him she'd put fifty on Marcus—the man she'd been sleeping with since October, whose wife was having their second child in April. She didn't tell him about the job offer in Seattle that would mean leaving everything behind. She didn't tell him how she'd started eating spinach every day, suddenly obsessed with her health at thirty-four, as if leafy greens could somehow prepare her body for whatever came next.

"They're doing the final rounds today," David said, squinting at his phone through wet sunglasses. "My source says five more names before close of business."

Elena's cable-knit sweater hung heavy on the chair beside her, useless in the Arizona heat. She'd brought it for the airport, for the hotel conference rooms, for the illusion that this was just another business trip. The sweater was armor against the air conditioning that always made her joints ache, against the corporate climate that had grown increasingly hostile since the merger.

She thought about the palm reader again. Maybe the crossroads wasn't about the job at all. Maybe it was about the life she'd built—the married lover, the rental apartment she'd lived in for seven years, the routine that had somehow become a life without her noticing.

"You should place another bet," David said, standing up. "Marcus. Word is he's safe."

Elena watched him walk away, her phone buzzing with a text from Marcus. The screen was cracked in the corner, a spiderweb fracture that had appeared the night she'd found out about the baby.

She finished her drink and stood up, leaving the cable-knit sweater on the chair. The betting pool was still open for another hour. She walked back toward the hotel room, away from the pool and its false sense of refuge, knowing that whatever crossroads she stood at, the only way through was forward.