The Sphinx in the Breakroom

Maya stared at the **water** cooler, the blue liquid rippling like her thoughts—uncertain, disturbed. Her quarterly review had ended twenty minutes ago with David's sphinx-like smile and those impossible questions about where she saw herself in five years. The man was a **sphinx** of corporate architecture, all riddles and no answers, perched on the edge of her career like a creature from mythology, waiting for her to solve puzzles that had no solution.

She stepped outside, needing air. The city rain had stopped, leaving everything slick and reflecting the bruised **orange** of sunset—beautiful in the way things are when something is ending. Her phone buzzed. Elena. Again. The third time this week. Maya had been avoiding her sister's calls since the funeral, since the reading of the will where Elena had gotten the house and Maya had gotten—what exactly? Their mother's **cat**, a creature of ancient judgment who stared at Maya now through the window of her apartment, as if knowing she was the spare daughter, the afterthought.

The old fedora she'd found in her mother's closet sat on her entryway table. Maya hadn't been able to throw it out. The **hat** smelled of lavender and something else—cigarettes and the 1980s and a woman who'd kept secrets until the very end. Who was she before she was Mother? Maya would never know. Some riddles, sphinx-like, went to the grave unanswered.

Her phone lit up again. Not Elena this time. A message from Marcus, the architect she'd met at that conference three months ago. "Dinner tonight? I found a place with the best Tom Yum." Water, orange (from the shrimp), maybe even a cat that wandered through the outdoor seating. The makings of something.

Maya typed back: Yes.

She put on the hat, feeling ridiculous and defiant both. Some puzzles you solved. Some you lived inside. And some, she thought, catching her own reflection in the darkened window—some you simply became.