Your salary had been $12,500 a month.
HR had reduced it to $730.
Seven hundred and thirty dollars.
That was not a salary. That was a joke with paperwork.
Lucia Vaughn, Head of Human Resources at Lujan Entertainment Group, had sat across from you in her cold little office on the forty-second floor and told you that your performance “did not meet company standards.” She had said it with smooth lipstick, perfect hair, and the dead-eyed calm of someone delivering cruelty she had already practiced in the mirror.
You had not argued.
You had not cried.
You had not begged to see the full report.
You had simply quit.
Now, as the taxi turned toward your apartment in Queens, you realized something strange.
You did not feel ruined.
You felt tired.
Not sad. Not scared. Just bone-deep tired in the way a person becomes tired after holding up a collapsing building while everyone else complains about the dust.
