The Sphinx in HR

Elena sat across from Marcus in the breakroom, picking at her salad. The spinach leaves, previously vibrant and crisp, had wilted under the office's unforgiving fluorescent lights—much like her enthusiasm for this job, this man, this entire Wednesday afternoon.

"You're doing it again," Marcus said, peeling an orange. Citrus scent cut through the stale coffee smell of the room. "That thing where you disappear inside your head."

"I'm not disappearing. I'm thinking."

"About?"

"About how you've been asked to lay off three people by Friday, and you're sitting here eating an orange like the world isn't burning."

Marcus paused, mid-peel. The orange rind hung like a question mark between them. "Who told you?"

"Janice in HR. The sphinx." Elena stabbed at her spinach. "She doesn't speak unless riddled first, but I bought her lunch yesterday."

"You shouldn't have done that."

"Someone had to." She looked at him—really looked. The man she'd spent two years building something with, something undefined and fragile and now evidently insufficient. "I'm on the list, aren't I?"

Marcus set down his orange. The breakroom clock ticked.

"I have until Friday," he said quietly. "I'm trying to figure out how to tell you without it feeling like a betrayal."

"It is a betrayal, Marcus. That's the point." Elena stood up, her chair scraping violently against the floor. "The sphinx knew. I knew. You thought you could protect me from the truth by eating oranges and pretending everything's fine."

"I love you," he said to her retreating back. "That's why this is impossible."

She paused at the door. "Love doesn't pay rent. And it definitely doesn't survive layoffs."

The elevator dinged as she left. Marcus sat alone with his orange, now fully peeled and segmented on a paper towel, and understood suddenly that some riddles answer themselves: the cost of doing business is everything, and no one makes it out whole.