The Riddle of the Pyramid

The corporate reorganization chart looked like a pyramid, Terry noted darkly. He was being moved from the middle layer to somewhere beneath the foundation.

"It's not a demotion," Sarah assured him, her sphinx-like smile revealing nothing. She had that way of asking questions that weren't really questions—riddles wrapped in corporate euphemism. "Where do you see yourself in five years, Terry?" she'd asked during his review, knowing perfectly well he'd be lucky to see five months.

He ran a hand through his hair, finding another gray strand at the temple. Forty-two and starting over, while Sarah—thirty, sharp,Ascending—dangled him over the precipice of obsolescence.

"The thing about pyramids," he said, surprising himself, "is they were built by people who didn't live to see the top."

Sarah's smile faltered for the first time. She leaned forward, and for a moment, the corporate riddler vanished, leaving someone almost human. "My father built something like that," she said quietly. "Died before it meant anything."

The air between them shifted. Terry saw her then—not the sphinx guarding his career's tomb, but another person trapped in someone else's monument.

"Your hair," she said suddenly. "You're pulling at it."

He dropped his hand. "Bad habit."

"My father did that. When he couldn't solve the riddle."

The pyramid on the screen between them flickered with some corporate animation, simultaneously meaningless and everything. Terry made a choice.

"Coffee?" he asked. "Not as a meeting. Just coffee."

Sarah considered him, really looked at him, for the first time. "Seven sharp," she said. "And Terry? Bring your own riddles."

He left her office with his job still uncertain, his hair still graying, but for the first time in months, not feeling like he was buried at all.