The Last Tuesday

Margot stood outside the glass doors of Peterson & Chase, her dog-eared copy of Meditations still in her bag where she'd shoved it three weeks ago. Inside, her team was already gathered for the 9 AM standup — the same meeting where Brent would inevitably interrupt her again, talk over her data with the confidence of a man who'd never read a spreadsheet in his life.

She'd been calling it "riding the bull" lately. The market was surging, their division was 'crushing it,' and somehow she'd become the designated matador — dodging horns, cape flourishing, while the bull charged through the china shop of her professional dignity. Her therapist had asked if she enjoyed the metaphor. Margot had laughed, the kind of laugh that sounds like something breaking.

"You think you're so clever," Brent had told her yesterday, leaning against her desk with that proprietary smile men used when they wanted you to know they owned your time. "Like a little fox. Always got an angle."

She'd wanted to say: I'm not clever. I'm forty-three and I Googled 'how to diversify your portfolio' at 2 AM because my ex-husband's alimony checks are two months late. Instead she'd smiled and made herself small.

The sphinx had come to her in a dream last week — not the Egyptian one with the lion body, but something worse: faceless, wingless, perched on the edge of her bed asking questions she couldn't answer. What do you build when the foundation rots? Who are you when the performance stops?

Now, outside the office, her phone buzzed. Her mother. Again. "Have you thought about the egg-freezing, sweetheart? The clock, you know —"

Margot ended the call. Through the glass, she could see them: Brent gesturing at a whiteboard, her colleagues nodding, the coffee machine gurgling in the corner like some mechanical heartbeat. This was the kingdom she'd spent fifteen years conquering. These were the people she'd chosen to impress.

Her rental waiting at the curb, engine idling.

She turned away from the building. The sphinx's question suddenly didn't seem so cryptic anymore. Some riddles solve themselves when you finally stop trying to answer them.