The Weight of Ascent

The corporate retreat brochure had promised clarity. Instead, Elena found herself at the Egyptian resort's infinity pool at midnight, still wearing her presentation clothes, watching the dark water merge with the sky. The corporate **pyramid** scheme—though they called it a multi-level leadership structure—had finally collapsed under its own weight, taking her department and three years of seventy-hour weeks with it.

She kicked off her heels. The water was surprisingly warm, like bathwater that had sat too long. Elena hadn't gone **swimming** since college, since before she'd learned that women who demanded fair raises were "difficult" and women who cried in bathroom stalls were "emotional." Now she was thirty-seven, unemployed by email, and floating on her back in a stranger's pool in a country she'd only seen on crisis news reports.

"You're going to ruin that suit," said a voice from the darkness.

Elena tread water, heart hammering. A man sat on the pool edge, eating from a plastic container. The food service supervisor who'd winked at her during breakfast. The one with kind eyes and tired posture.

"It's a rental," she said. "Everything's a rental now."

He patted the tile beside him. She swam over, dripping and shivering. He offered her a forkful of something green.

"**Spinach**," he said. "From the staff kitchen. They threw out everything when the layoffs started. Want some?"

Elena took the container. The spinach was cold and garlicky, possibly the most honest thing she'd eaten in years. They sat there until dawn, two people cast out from the pyramid, eating salvaged spinach and watching the desert light change.

"What happens now?" she asked.

"Now," he said, "we figure out how to build something that doesn't require victims at the bottom."

The sun rose over the ancient pyramids in the distance. For the first time in three years, Elena didn't think about her inbox.