The Wellness Pyramid

Sarah stood on the padel court at 7 AM, her racquet arm throbbing. Across the net, Richard from Legal was already sweating through his polo shirt, serving with aggressive precision. They were both playing this game — the sport, and the other one.

"Your vitamin startup taking off yet?" Richard asked between points, smashing the ball into the corner.

"Growing," Sarah lied, wiping sweat from her eyes. "Pyramid scheme, more like," he laughed, but Sarah's stomach tightened. He wasn't wrong. She'd been running this MLM on the side for eight months, selling wellness to coworkers who sensed her desperation and bought anyway. The vitamins did nothing. The money didn't either.

Her phone buzzed in her bag. Another notification from the corporate office: Q3 targets, the pyramid structure of their organization realigning again. She was thirty-five floors up in the glass tower, climbing nothing at all.

"You good?" Richard asked. He'd stopped playing.

Sarah looked at him — really looked. Richard, with his pending divorce and his weekend pilates classes and his vitamins bought from her. Richard, who was probably lonely. Who was definitely running from something too.

"No," she said. "Actually, I'm not."

He nodded. The ball rolled between them, stopping at the service line. Neither moved to pick it up.

"My wife says I'm emotionally constipated," Richard offered, which was funny and sad and exactly the kind of thing someone said when they'd been holding it in for years.

"I sell people false hope in capsule form," Sarah said. "Thirty dollars a bottle."

"I bill three hundred an hour to help corporations ruin lives."

They stood there in the morning light, the empty court between them, the vitamin tablets in her bag dissolving into nothing, the corporate pyramid looming above them both. For once, nobody was running anywhere.

"Padel tomorrow?" Richard asked finally.

"Tomorrow," Sarah agreed, and they walked off the court together, shoulders almost touching.