The Service Elevator

The vitamin supplements rattled in Elena's purse as she stepped into the service elevator—D, zinc, magnesium, a colorful arsenal against forty-two. She swallowed them dry between meetings, a ritual of defiance against the bodies that failed her mother at forty-five.

She'd been running for three years. Not literally—God, no—but the frantic sprint through presentations, performance reviews, and her ex-husband's second wedding. The cardio was purely metaphorical, though she'd added actual jogging at dawn, her sneakers hitting the pavement while the city slept.

"You're still here?" Marcus's voice boomed across the padel court. He stood by the net, perspiration glistening on his chest, surrounded by men who'd mistaken middle age for an endless summer. "We're short a player."

Elena shouldn't have said yes. She should have gathered her purse and those rattling pills and taken the normal elevator to her corner office. But something about the court's glass walls caught the sunset—gold and fractured, like the bonuses she kept accepting.

Her serve went wide. The second bounced off the back wall.

"Easy," Marcus said, retrieving the ball. His hand grazed hers. "You're holding everything too tight."

The bull market had been generous to her division. Elena had ridden it—aggressive, relentless, a bull in heels. But standing there, racquet raised, she couldn't remember the last trade she'd actually cared about. Her mother had died with a pristine medicine cabinet. Vitamins hadn't saved her.

Marcus served. Elena's return clipped the net.

"Your wife," she heard herself say. "Does she mind you playing late on Tuesdays?"

He laughed. "She's at pilates. She hates padel. Says it's for bankers trying to remember they have bodies."

The words settled between them like dust.

"I'm a banker," Elena said.

"I know." His eyes held something she hadn't seen in boardrooms. "That's why I asked."

Her phone buzzed—her assistant, the quarterly report, the vitamin reminder. Everything in her life prescribed, measured, optimized.

Elena set down her racquet. The ball rolled toward her feet—blue and small and incredibly simple.

"I forgot how to miss," she said.

Marcus smiled, and it wasn't about winning. "Want to try again?"

The vitamins sat untouched in her purse. The elevator could wait. For once, Elena wasn't running anywhere.