Downward Spiral

Lizzy Massey was thirty-two years old and she had a plan, and the plan was to get fired.

It was not a plan she was proud of. But she'd done the math on a napkin one night back in February, sitting at her kitchen table with a cold cup of tea and a spreadsheet she'd made about cat cafés, and the math was simple. She had no savings worth mentioning. She had rent. She had a dream that needed a down payment and a business license and about forty thousand dollars of gumption she did not currently possess. What she had instead was a job she was sick of, teaching yoga at a converted warehouse called the Om & Then Some Wellness Clinic, where the smoothies cost nine dollars and the owner, Hans Williamson, thought "core values" was a punchline you put on a mug.

Unemployment would not fund a cat café either, not by itself. But it would buy her time. Time to apply for the small business loan, time to write the business plan Hans kept asking about in that cheerful voice of his, time to figure her life out. And you could not collect unemployment if you quit. You had to be fired. That was the entire trick of it, and the trick was that Hans would not fire her.

She'd tried everything short of arson. She'd shown up late. She'd mixed up the class schedule so a beginners' gentle flow got a power vinyasa and one retired schoolteacher had to lie down in the lobby with a cold cloth. She'd played the same fifteen-minute track of whale sounds on repeat for three weeks until a man named Vinnie had complained in writing. Hans had apologized to Vinnie and given Lizzy a speaking slot at the staff meeting about "musical variety."

The man simply would not take a hint. It was maddening. It was almost impressive.

So on this particular Friday, the last Friday of a long month, with the eight o'clock class being the last thing between her and freedom, Lizzy decided to stop being subtle.

* * *

The six o'clock class was called Morning Renewal, which was already a lie, because it was at six in the evening. There were fourteen people in the room, mostly regulars, mostly people who came as much for the gossip as the stretching. Lizzy walked in carrying her rolled mat in one hand and a family-size bag of salt and vinegar chips in the other.

She unrolled the mat. She sat down cross-legged at the front of the room. She opened the bag with a crack that echoed off the warehouse rafters, and she ate a chip.

"Welcome to Morning Renewal," she said, chewing. "Let's begin with a breath."

Nobody said anything. Vinnie, in the back, looked personally scandalized, which was the closest Vinnie came to an emotion. Lizzy ate another chip, a big one, and led fourteen people through a sun salutation while crunching. She held a warrior two for a beat too long so she could eat two chips at once. The salt and vinegar smell was doing most of the work for her, honestly. She'd counted on that.

Halfway through the class, the door at the back opened and Hans came in. Thirty-eight years old, six foot two, the kind of calm that other people found soothing and Lizzy found deeply condescending. He stood by the door with his arms crossed, watching her eat chips during downward dog, and when she looked at him he gave her a thumbs up.

A thumbs up. She could have screamed.

After class he caught her in the hall, still holding the bag, crumbs on her black leggings like evidence.

"Salt and vinegar," he said. "Bold choice for cardio flow."

"I'm trying to get fired," she said. "You know that. I've told you that. In words."

"You've told me you want to open a cat café. Those are different sentences." He plucked the bag out of her hand, ate a chip, and handed it back. "Also these are Vinnie's least favorite. Points for that."

"Hans. Fire me."

"Can't. Your classes are the only thing keeping the lights on. The hot yoga crowd drifted off to that place on Meridian, the acupuncturist quit, and the massage therapist..." He waved a hand, and Lizzy felt a small unwelcome twinge about that, because the massage therapist was her ex, Malik, and they'd dated two years before breaking up when she was twenty-nine, and the way Hans waved his hand was a whole story in itself. "Anyway. You're the business. So, no!"

"Then I'll be worse."

"I've seen your worst. I promoted the guy who fell asleep in his own class."

She had no answer for that, because it was true, and he knew it, and he walked off down the hall whistling.

* * *

The eight o'clock slot was restorative yoga, which was a class where people basically lay on bolsters and breathed. It was Lizzy's least favorite to teach and therefore, tonight, her favorite. She walked in, looked at the nine people arranged on their mats, and made an executive decision.

"Tonight we're doing a deep restorative practice," she announced. "We're going to hold one pose. It's called lying down. Really get into it. Feel the floor. The floor is supporting you. That's the whole... that's the entire pose."

She set a timer for fifty minutes, put a folded blanket under her own head, and lay down.

It was, she reflected, the single most honest class she had ever taught. People made little satisfied noises. The lights were low. Somewhere around minute twenty she genuinely almost fell asleep, which would have been the crown jewel of her sabotage campaign, sleeping on the clock in front of paying customers.

At minute fifty she opened one eye. Hans was sitting against the mirror wall at the back of the room, legs crossed, watching her with his chin on his fist.

"Great class," he said, loud enough that the students heard it. "Best attendance response we've had all quarter. Lizzy, from now on you're running the whole restorative program. Full creative control. That's a raise."

Two of the students clapped. A third said "oh, wonderful" in a way that suggested she'd been wanting the class to be exactly that for years.

Lizzy lay back down and stared at the ceiling and thought about the napkin math and about how much a small business loan application needed from her and about how, if she murdered her boss with a yoga block, the unemployment question became complicated in a different way.

* * *

At nine the clinic was empty. The last of the students had drifted out into the cold. Lizzy found Hans in his