The Riddle at Your Desk

Maya pushed the spinach around her plate, watching it wilt under the fluorescent hum of the breakroom. Three years at this firm and she'd finally mastered the art of looking busy while contemplating mortality. The spinach—organic, pre-washed, overwhelmingly green—seemed to mock her. It was the kind of lunch someone ate when they'd given up on pleasure but hadn't quite surrendered to despair.

Her phone buzzed. Peters.

"My office. Now. Bring the quarterly projections."

Peters was the sphinx of the fourteenth floor, a man who spoke exclusively in riddles and terrorized underlings with questions that had no correct answers. Last week, he'd asked Karen from Accounting to "explain the mathematics of trust" and kept her in his office for three hours.

Maya swallowed. Her mouth tasted like iron. She'd forgotten to take her vitamin D again—the little yellow pill that her doctor said was essential for someone who "worked in a cave." The joke wasn't funny anymore. Nothing was.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked, standing in his doorway. The glass walls made her feel like a specimen.

Peters swiveled in his chair. He held her projections, marked up in red ink that looked suspiciously like blood. "Tell me, Maya—what do we value?"

"The company values innovation, integrity—"

"No." He tapped the paper. "What do YOU value?"

The spinach sat heavy in her stomach. She thought about rent, about her mother's medical bills, about the way her brother called her 'sellout' at Thanksgiving. She thought about the jar of vitamins on her bedside table, each one a promise to future-self that present-self kept breaking.

"I value having health insurance," she said, and the truth of it surprised her.

Peters nodded, almost imperceptibly. "Good answer. Most people lie. They talk about passion or purpose or making a difference. But you—you're honest about what keeps you upright." He slid the paper across his desk. "Approved."

She blinked. "That's it? No riddle? No three-hour interrogation about the metaphysics of spreadsheets?"

"That was the riddle, Maya." He smiled, and it almost reached his eyes. "Everyone wants something profound. But sometimes the real question is what you'll admit to yourself."

She walked back to her desk, approval in hand. The spinach had been worth it. The vitamins would wait until tomorrow. Some things, she decided, were better addressed in the dark.