The Pyramid of Empty Desks

The baseball card landed on my desk with a hollow thwack—a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr., edges worn soft as old leather. Tom from accounting was cleaning out his father's estate, passing around artifacts like communion wafers.

'I don't even like baseball,' I said, staring at the pristine face of a player I'd watched through chain-link fences at minor league games with my own father, back when the smell of cheap beer and cut grass still meant something sacred.

'Take it anyway,' Tom said, his thinning hair catching the fluorescent lights. 'Dad collected these like they were gold bars. Now they're just cardboard.' He walked away, leaving me with the ghost of someone else's nostalgia.

That afternoon, the VP called an emergency meeting. We filed into the conference room—twenty of us arranged in what management called 'the pyramid formation,' a horseshoe of chairs that funneled attention to the front where the brass sat like judges at a sentencing.

' restructuring,' the VP said, not meeting anyone's eyes. 'We're becoming more agile. Leaner.' Code for: half of you won't be here next month.

I caught Marcie's eye across the room. We'd been something once—two years of whispered hotel reservations and carefully timed lunch breaks, back when the risk felt like a thrill instead of a slow-motion car crash. Her hair was different now, chopped short and dyed something violent and defiant. I wondered if she was seeing someone who appreciated that kind of boldness, or if she'd just stopped caring what men thought of her altogether.

The questions started, predictable and desperate. 'Will there be severance?' 'How much notice?' 'What happens to our projects?'

Then Dave from sales stood up, red-faced and trembling. 'You promised us stability,' he said, his voice cracking. 'We built this division.'

The VP stared him down like a bull sizing up a matador who'd forgotten his cape. 'Promises were made based on market conditions that no longer exist, Dave. Surely you understand how business works.'

Dave sat down. Something in the room folded. I looked down at the Griffey card on the table in front of me, remembered my father explaining that some players just have it—that unnameable quality that makes them rise when everyone else is falling apart. He'd died still believing that mattered.

After the meeting, Marcie caught me in the hallway. 'You going to fight for your job?' she asked, not unkindly.

'I don't think there's anything left to fight for,' I said. Then, because the past has a way of demanding its due: 'Your hair looks good. Brave.'

She smiled, something complicated flickering behind her eyes. 'Yeah, well. Sometimes you have to cut everything off to remember what you actually look like.' She touched my wrist, briefly, then walked away.

That night, I put the baseball card in a drawer. Some things are better left unexamined—what we kept, what we lost, and the hollow sound they make when they finally land.