The Pyramid's Last Papaya

The papaya sat rotting on Miranda's desk—a perfect metaphor for this whole department. Seventeen months I'd watched them build this pyramid scheme, each level recruiting three more poor saps below them, until the structure resembled less a business and more a mathematical impossibility.

"Your hair's getting thin," she said without looking up from her spreadsheet, silver scissors snipping another corporate scapegoat from the organizational chart. "Stress, David. That's what happens when you grow a conscience in a pyramid."

I ran a hand through my thinning hair. At forty-three, I'd expected some losses, but not like this—not strand by strand while I watched good people lose their savings to our "revolutionary nutrition program."

"Fox got promoted again," I said, nodding toward the glass office where Ryan Foxworthy held court with three new recruits. "That's three times this quarter."

Miranda finally looked up. Her eyes, once sharp as her scissors, had gone soft with resignation. "He's clever like that. Fox always finds the holes in the regulations before they're even written."

I thought about the spinach smoothies we sold as miracle cleansers. The lie had grown so elaborate we'd started believing it ourselves. Every morning, I drank that green sludge and pretended it tasted like anything other than pulverized dreams.

"My grandmother ate papaya every morning," I said suddenly. "In Brazil. She swore it kept her young until she died at ninety-four."

"And did it?"

"No. She just got old gracefully." I picked up the rotting fruit, its skin turning from yellow to brown. "She said nothing ages you faster than pretending you're not aging."

Ryan Foxworthy burst from his office, high-fiving his new recruits. Another pyramid built on lies, another round of commissions drawn from savings accounts and retirement funds.

"Three weeks," Miranda said quietly. "That's how long before the whole thing collapses."

I tossed the papaya into the trash. "Then three weeks is how long we have to tear it down."

"From the inside? Like a fox?"

"Like a grown-ass man who's tired of watching good people lose their life savings."

She smiled then—first genuine smile I'd seen in months. "Your hair really is thinning, David."

"Your papaya is rotting, Miranda."

"Touché."