The Riddle at the End of the Hallway

Elena stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of her forty-second-story corner office, watching the sunset bleed orange across Manhattan's skyline like something ancient and wounded. Below her, the city had become a pyramid of light—corporate hierarchy made visible, each tier feeding the one above.

Her assistant had left a salad on her desk hours ago. The spinach leaves were already wilting, darkening like her own reflection in the glass. At forty-seven, Elena had everything she'd been told to want: the title, the salary, the view. Yet here she was, feeling like she'd spent two decades solving the wrong riddle entirely.

Her boss Marcus called her The Sphinx—said nobody could read her, that she sat at the head of the conference table like something carved from stone, impossible to crack. He meant it as a compliment. She'd started to hear it as an indictment.

"You're being bullish on the merger," Marcus had told her that morning, his voice dropping into the conspiratorial register men used when they thought they were including her in something elemental. "Stick to your guns. They'll respect strength."

She had nodded. She always nodded.

But something had shifted during the presentation—the way the junior analyst, David, had looked at her when she'd cut off his question with a razor-sharp rebuttal. Not admiration. Fear. Recognition. He'd seen what she'd become.

Elena picked up her phone. There were three texts from her ex-husband about their daughter's college applications. Two from her mother asking if she was coming for Thanksgiving. One from David—just sent:

"I didn't know you could still be lonely at the top."

She watched the last of the orange light fade from the sky, feeling something crack open inside her chest like an egg. The sphinx had riddles. She'd made herself into one.

Elena picked up her pen and wrote something on the back of her quarterly report: *I don't want to be strong anymore. I want to be real.*

The spinach salad sat untouched on her desk. Tomorrow, she would cancel the meeting. Tomorrow, she would answer David's text. Tomorrow, she would call her mother.

Tonight, she would simply stand here and watch the city become something else in the dark.