The Riddle in the Salad Bar

Maya stood in the office cafeteria, staring at the wilted spinach in her bowl like it held the secrets to her failing marriage. At thirty-four, she'd expected life to feel more resolved, less like a series of compromises wearing away at her edges.

"You're going to turn into a vitamin supplement if you keep eating like that," said Daniel, the new data analyst who'd been occupying far too much of her mental bandwidth lately. He was twenty-six, with the kind of effortless confidence that made Maya feel ancient.

"We can't all survive on espresso and entitlement," she heard herself say, then immediately regretted the sharpness. Daniel just laughed, revealing that annoyingly endearing dimple.

Her iphone buzzed in her pocket — a text from Mark: 'Dinner tonight? Need to talk.' The words hit her like cold water. Three years of marriage, and 'need to talk' still triggered a visceral Pavlovian response.

"Everything okay?" Daniel asked, suddenly too close.

"Fine. Just... work things."

Later, standing before the replica sphinx in the company lobby — some executive's pretentious idea of "symbolism" — Maya found herself reciting the riddle silently: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?

The answer had always seemed so tidy before. Now she wondered if Oedipus had felt like he was guessing.

The divorce papers would come later. Mark had met someone else — someone who didn't overanalyze every meal, who didn't wake at 3 AM scrolling through depression statistics, whose eyes didn't carry that perpetual look of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Maya saw Daniel one last time at her going-away party. He'd brought flowers, of all things.

"I heard you're leaving," he said. "Not just the job."

"Starting over. Somewhere warm."

"The sphinx," he said unexpectedly, "got destroyed, you know. The original. Napoleon's soldiers used it for target practice. Still standing, though."

They stood there together as people laughed around them, two monuments in a room full of temporary things.

"Why did you tell me that?" Maya asked.

Daniel shrugged, that dimple appearing again. "Even wrecked things survive."

Maya walked out into the rain, spinach lunch long forgotten, vitamin supplements untouched, phone silent in her pocket. Some riddles, she decided, don't have answers — only next chapters.