The Sphinx at the Holiday Inn

The corporate pyramid scheme had finally collapsed, taking with it my dignity, my 401k, and most catastrophically, my marriage. I stood outside the Akron Holiday Inn, nursing a warm gin and tonic, wearing a ridiculous fedora I'd bought to hide the gray streaks that had invaded my hair like unwelcome guests at a party that had gone on too long.

That's when she approached—the fox from accounting, whose real name I'd never learned. She'd always moved through the office with predatory grace, while the rest of us scurried like field mice. Now she stood before me in a cocktail dress that cost more than my car.

"You look like you're contemplating the void," she said, gesturing toward the stagnant water of the hotel pool, where a lone businessman floated on his back like a corpse in training.

"Just trying to solve the riddle," I said, tapping the temple of my stupid hat.

"What riddle?"

"The one the sphinx asks when everything you built turns out to be smoke and mirrors. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

She smiled, and I saw something beneath the corporate predator—something tired and hopeful and devastatingly human. "Man. And the answer to your riddle is: you start over."

She took my hand, and for the first time in months, I didn't feel like I was drowning. The pyramid was rubble, the fox was my lifeline, and somewhere in that parking lot, beneath the fluorescent hum of vacancy signs, I finally stopped waiting for my life to begin.