The Riddle of Afternoon Light

The sphinx of concrete and glass—Miriam's corporate headquarters—loomed over the empty pool deck. Forty-seven years old, divorced, and vice president of nothing consequential, she sat with her legs dangling in the water. The afternoon light caught the ripples, casting fractured reflections across her face.

"You forgot your hat again," said Daniel, the building's security guard, appearing with a floppy straw thing he'd bought from a street vendor. His shift ended in twenty minutes. They'd been having this conversation—this whatever it was—for six months.

"I'm not the hat-wearing type," she said, but accepted it anyway. Their fingers brushed. Lightning struck somewhere in the distance, though the sky remained stubbornly blue.

"There's a storm coming,"

"There's always a storm coming."

Daniel sat beside her, removing his uniform cap. He was twenty-eight, with shoulders that had never learned to apologize for taking up space. Miriam's marriage had dissolved not with fireworks but with the terrible quiet of two people who'd forgotten how to want each other. Now she found herself wanting again—messily, inappropriately, in the company of a man who thought she was elegant instead of merely efficient.

"My grandmother had a riddle," Daniel said. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?"

"The sphinx's riddle. Man." She touched his wrist. "And what happens when he's too tired for walking?"

"Then he sits by a pool with a beautiful woman who makes terrible jokes about corporate architecture."

Lightning closer now. A true storm approached.

"I have a presentation at eight," she said. "Annual projections."

"And I have... what do I have?" He laughed bitterly. "A second date with a pharmacist my mother thinks is appropriate."

Miriam stood up, water streaming down her legs. She held out her hand.

"Fuck it," she said. "Fuck the projections. Fuck the pharmacist."

Daniel looked at her hand, then at the storm-darkened sky, then back at her. "I'll need my hat back."

"Keep it," she said, pulling him toward the building's shadow. "You look better in it anyway."