The Pyramid's Shadow

My palms were sweating again.

I wiped them on my slacks, a nervous tic I'd developed somewhere in my late thirties, though I couldn't say exactly when. Probably around the time I stopped sleeping through the night. The conference room at the Luxor was freezing — they always are — but my body was running hot, adrenaline and something else, something darker.

"We need you to fly to Chicago," Marcus was saying, his voice smooth and practiced. "The merger's fragile. Your relationship with the team out there... it's the linchpin."

I nodded, my throat tight. My marriage was also a linchpin, once. Now it was just rubble I stepped over every morning on my way to the coffee maker.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Las Vegas baked in the brutal desert sun. The artificial **palm** trees that lined the pool deck below looked ridiculous from thirty floors up — spindly plastic fantasies anchored in concrete, pretending at tropical paradise in a valley that received four inches of rain a year. I remembered Sarah dragging me to a palm reader on our anniversary three years ago. The woman had taken one look at my hands, traced the sweat-slicked lines, and told me I was at a crossroads. Choose wisely, she'd said.

I'd chosen wrong.

"You with me, David?" Marcus asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Chicago. When?"

"Tuesday. You'll catch the **baseball** game with Stevenson, loosen him up a little. His dad played in the minors back in the eighties. It's an in."

I almost laughed. Stevenson and I had nothing in common except that we'd both sold pieces of our souls to companies that would replace us in a heartbeat if our numbers dipped. But I'd nod and buy the overpriced ticket and eat lukewarm nachos while pretending to care about a sport I hadn't watched since college, back when my older brother still talked to me, back when weekends meant pickup games in the park instead of existential dread in hotel rooms.

The Luxor's glass **pyramid** rose before me, its angular face catching the dying light. Thirty stories of triangular geometry, an ancient tomb shape rebranded as entertainment. Sarah had loved this place — the kitsch, the fake Egyptian motifs, the way they'd made something sacred into a tourist trap. She'd said it was perfect for us.

She'd left me six months later.

"Earth to David." Marcus was standing now, gathering his things. "Go drink some **water**, man. You look like hell."

I waited until he left before pulling the small bottle from my bag. Not water — something amber and expensive, stolen from the minibar. I drank it in one burning swallow, staring out at the city below.

Somewhere down there, in all that neon and desperation, Sarah might be laughing with someone else. Somewhere in Chicago, Stevenson was probably planning his weekend, secure in his pyramid of corporate climbing. And somewhere in the desert, real palm trees were growing in the dry heat, living and dying without pretending to be something they weren't.

I wiped my palms on my slacks again. They were still sweating.

Some patterns you just can't break.