Riddles in the Break Room

The papaya sat on Mara's desk like a silent accusation. At 47, after two decades at the firm, she'd been demoted to reporting to Jordan—a man who wore his ambition like cheap cologne.

"You're like the sphinx," Jordan had said during her performance review, tapping his pen against his orange baseball cap that never left his desk. "All these riddles, Mara. All this mystery about what you actually *do* all day."

What she did was mourn. Her husband had been dead eight months. Her daughter had moved across the country, citing "boundaries" and "healing." The performance review was the same week her doctor prescribed vitamin D supplements for the "grief fog" that had settled in her bones.

Now she stared at the papaya—Aaron's favorite fruit. He'd bought one every Sunday without fail, slicing it with ceremonial slowness while making terrible jokes about its tropical origins. "Adventure in a fruit," he'd called it.

The riddle Jordan couldn't solve was how someone could show up, answer emails, attend meetings, and still be entirely absent. The sphinx's secret wasn't wisdom—it was that she'd forgotten her own question.

Mara picked up the papaya, considered its strange spotted skin. Jordan wanted mystery? She'd give him mystery. She'd be the most sphinx-like sphinx he'd ever managed.

Her phone buzzed. Her daughter. Maybe.

The papaya went into the trash. Mara opened the vitamin bottle and swallowed one dry. Tomorrow she'd buy herself a baseball cap. Tomorrow she'd ask Jordan what *he* actually did all day beyond rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

The sphinx had devoured herself. Time to see what remained.