The Pyramid Scheme

The iphone buzzed against my palm at 2 AM, its blue light illuminating the dark hotel room like a cold moon. Dubai. Another conference, another pyramid scheme disguised as corporate strategy. I'd been presenting slides about scaling success for six hours, my voice steady even as I felt myself hollowing out, cell by cell.

Room service had brought a salad I hadn't touched. The spinach leaves were already wilting, dark green going limp and translucent in the hotel air conditioning. Much like me, really.

"You look like shit," Sarah had said that morning, before she'd caught her flight back to London. She'd taken my hand, reading my palm with the casual intimacy of ten years together. "Life line's shorter than it used to be."

I'd laughed. The flight attendant had called us "lovely couple." We hadn't had the heart to correct her.

Now the iphone lit up again. Sarah. Not a call—a photo. Her hand, palm pressed against her window somewhere over Europe, the clouds below painted pink and gold by a sunrise I wouldn't see for another three hours.

I set the phone on the nightstand and lay back, staring at the ceiling. The corporate pyramid above me was vast and ancient, and I was just another block in its foundation, holding up weight I couldn't see, for people I'd never meet. Tomorrow I'd wake up, shave, put on the suit that cost more than my first car, and climb back up.

Somewhere between Dubai and London, something inside me would stay asleep. Maybe that was the point. Maybe we were all just zombies really—walking dead in tailored suits, moving through the motions, eating room service spinach and sending photos of palms across time zones, pretending this was enough.

The iphone buzzed again. Sarah's next message: "Can't wait to be home."

I typed back, "Me neither," and meant it more than anything.

Somehow, that small truth felt like the first real thing I'd done in days.