The Pyramid of Betrayals

The corporate **spy** sat in his car outside the restaurant, watching through rain-streaked windows. He wasn't even a real spy—just some middle manager in corporate security who'd been assigned to follow his boss's wife. But the pay was good, and after his divorce, he needed the money. His own infidelity had cost him everything, yet here he was, paid to expose someone else's.

Inside, the woman laughed at something her dinner companion said. She wore a wide-brimmed **hat** that cast half her face in shadow—the same kind of hat his ex-wife used to wear to garden parties, back when they still attended garden parties. He remembered buying it for her on a vacation in Mexico, how she'd tilted her head just so, how the sun had caught the brim like a halo.

Now that hat sat in a box somewhere in his apartment, along with everything else she hadn't bothered to take. The only thing he'd kept was their dog—a aging golden retriever named Baxter who waited at home, probably sleeping on the good sofa despite being told not to. Baxter was the innocent one in all of this. Dogs didn't cheat. Dogs didn't lie about working late when they were actually at a hotel bar with someone from accounting.

The woman inside reached across the table, her fingers grazing her companion's hand. A small **pyramid** of crystal sat between them on the white tablecloth—some paperweight or objet d'art catching the restaurant's soft light. It reminded him of the pyramid his ex-wife had kept on her desk, the one he'd bought in Egypt during a business trip he'd taken alone. "For balance," she'd said. "For perspective." He'd laughed at the time. What had he needed perspective on then?

He watched the pyramid catch the light and thought about all the small betrayals that built up like stone blocks, layer upon layer, until you had a monument to something that used to be a marriage. The spy started his car. Some truths weren't worth documenting.