The Riddle of the Living

The first time Elena met Marcus, she hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. She was dragging herself through the office corridors like one of the walking dead, a corporate zombie sustained entirely by caffeine and the hollow promise of a bonus that never seemed to materialize. The fluorescent lights hummed their eternal complaint overhead.

He was sitting on her desk—actually on it, legs crossed, wearing that insufferable expression of calm that she'd come to associate with people who had nothing left to lose.

"You look like shit," he said, not unkindly.

"Flattery will get you nowhere."

"I'm the new consultant. Marcus."

"Elena. She who answers the sphinx's riddles and lives to tell the tale."

"Is that what we call the CFO now?"

They'd fallen into something after that—not quite love, not quite friendship, but a shared understanding of what it meant to be hollowed out by the same machine. Marcus had his own ghosts. He spoke of his daughter sometimes, in the past tense, and Elena knew better than to ask.

The night everything changed, a storm was brewing over the city. Lightning kept fracturing the sky, illuminating the empty office in sudden, stark flashes. They were the last two left, as always.

"I'm leaving," Marcus said, setting down the resignation letter he'd been drafting for weeks. "Going to open that bookstore by the coast. The one I talked about."

"You're forty-two, Marcus."

"Exactly. Old enough to know better, young enough to still do something about it."

He looked at her then, really looked at her, and she felt exposed in a way she hadn't in years.

"The sphinx asks one question," he said softly. "What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

"Man. We learn that in school."

"No. The answer is: whatever you're brave enough to become."

Another flash of lightning, and in that brief illumination, Elena saw her own reflection in the darkened window—tired, afraid, but still somehow standing on two legs. Not a zombie after all. Something else entirely.

She picked up her pen. "Wait. I think I have a letter to write too."