Riddle in the Break Room

The orange rolled across the linoleum floor, stopping against Maria's scuffed heel. She stared at it, wondering when her life had become this: forty-two years old, a vitamin deficiency her doctor called 'concerning,' and a corporate job that had transformed her into something resembling a zombie. The fluorescent lights hummed their usual headache-inducing frequency.

'You going to eat that?' asked David from the doorway. The new IT guy with tired eyes and a wedding ring indentation on his finger.

She picked it up, the citrus scent briefly cutting through the recycled air. 'It's yours. I've lost my appetite.'

They'd been meeting in the break room like this for weeks — two married people engaging in the most benign affair imaginable: conversation about their dead marriages, their dying dreams, the peculiar exhaustion of middle age. It wasn't physical. It was worse. It was the intimacy of understanding.

'My daughter asked me a riddle this morning,' David said, settling onto the counter. 'What has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in evening?'

Maria laughed softly. 'The sphinx's riddle. Man. We're all crawling, then walking upright, then leaning on canes.' She traced the pattern of the ceiling tiles. 'Except I feel like I skipped the walking upright part.'

'That's not the answer she expected.' He moved closer, his hand brushing hers as he reached for a discarded mug. 'She said it was a bear. Because bears can stand on two legs.'

'That's terrifyingly wrong.'

'It's also kind of brilliant. Children see possibilities we've forgotten.' His voice dropped lower. 'Like us pretending we're just coworkers having lunch.'

'Maria?' Her supervisor's voice from the hallway. 'The vitamin supplements you ordered are here.'

They stepped apart like guilty teenagers. Maria watched David leave, the orange still sitting on the counter between them. She picked it up, finally, and peeled it, the juice stinging a small cut on her finger she hadn't noticed. Some riddles, she thought, have answers that change depending on who's asking.

Some days, you're the sphinx. Some days, you're just someone trying to remember what it felt like to be alive.