Riddle in the Waiting Room

The stray cat appeared at precisely 7:43 AM each morning, as if his schedule were as tightly managed as mine. I'd sit on the fire escape with my coffee—black, bitter—while he watched me through the railing with eyes the color of oxidized copper. We understood each other: two creatures suspended between wanting and not wanting, between belonging and not belonging.

'You're back,' I said today, pouring a splash of milk into a saucer I'd started leaving out three weeks ago. My therapist called it 'grounding technique.' I called it the only conversation I looked forward to.

The vitamin regimen sat on the counter inside: D3 for the seasonal affective disorder that had followed me across three time zones, B-complex for the nerve damage that was either stress or something neurological, depending on which specialist I'd seen last. My ex-wife had called them my 'optimism pills' in that tone that simultaneously conveyed concern and condescension. She'd moved to Seattle six months ago. I'd moved into this apartment and ordered the vitamins online in bulk, as if stocking up for winter I couldn't see ending.

The cat finished the milk and began washing his face with slow, deliberate strokes. His front left paw was missing two toes—healed over, ancient trauma. Sometimes I wondered about his story. Other times I wondered if wondering about a cat's backstory meant I'd officially given up on my own.

My mother called last night, drunk again. 'You're thirty-five, David,' she'd said. 'You're supposed to have figured something out by now.' I'd hung up gently, the way you hang up on someone who's drowning and wants you to hold them under too.

I went back inside. The sphinx terrarium sat on my bookshelf, a Christmas gift from my sister who thought I needed hobbies. The statue was actually Mexican, from some Oaxacan workshop—winged, jaguar-headed, nothing like the Egyptian original. But I liked the word. Sphinx. A creature who asks questions and eats you if you get them wrong. Or maybe it's that all questions are traps, and the only way to survive is refusing to answer.

The cat jumped onto the fire escape and scratched at the glass door. I let him in. He walked to the terrarium, sniffed the sphinx, and looked back at me.

'Yeah,' I said. 'I don't know either.'

He settled onto my chest as I lay on the sofa, purring like a small motor of forgiveness. For a moment, everything felt possible. For a moment, nothing needed to be solved. The vitamins could wait. The riddle could wait. I closed my eyes and let myself be held together by the weight of something that needed nothing from me except to exist.