The Pyramid Scheme of Memory

The corporate pyramid rose outside my window, a glass monument to ambition I'd stopped climbing three years ago. At forty-two, I'd settled into the middle tier—safe, suffocating, and strangely comfortable.

'You still eating that papaya salad?' Marcus asked, leaning against my cubicle wall. He was twenty-four, still hungry.

'It's reminder,' I said, poking at the neon-orange fruit. 'Of my honeymoon. Kauai. Before.'

'Before what?'

'Before I became someone who eats lunch at my desk.'

The coaxial cable behind my monitor had frayed. Exposed wire glittered like a threat. I'd meant to replace it for months, but there was something honest about its decay—a signal deterioration I could feel in my bones.

'They're restructuring,' Marcus said. 'Again.'

'They're always restructuring. It's what the pyramid does—reshuffle the stones.'

'This time feels different. My boss—she says—'

'She says what you need to believe. That's her job.' I finally took a bite of papaya. Sweet, then cloying. 'Twenty years ago, I was you. Thought I could climb the glass sides if I just worked harder, ate lunch faster, believed the right things.'

'And?'

'And I'm still here. The pyramid's still here. The only thing that changed is what I call winning.'

My phone buzzed—Sarah, asking about dinner. Our eighth anniversary. The cable behind my screen spasmed, the monitor flickering gray.

'I should fix this cable,' I said.

'Or climb higher,' Marcus suggested, not hearing me at all.

I looked at the papaya, turning brown where I'd pierced it. Time doing what time does. Somewhere above us, in the pyramid's spire, someone was making decisions that would decide whether Marcus ate lunch at his desk next month. And I would eat my papaya and go home to Sarah and call it winning.

'No,' I said. 'Some things aren't broken. They're just finished.'