Riddles at the Greek Corner

Elena picked at the spanakopita, the flakes of phyllo drifting onto her plate like snow on a dead landscape. Across the table, Marcus watched her with those eyes—hooded, distant, like he was solving an equation she couldn't see.

"You have spinach in your teeth," he said.

She wiped her mouth with the napkin. "Thanks. You know, for noticing."

"I notice things."

"Do you?" Her voice cracked. "Because I've been trying to tell you something for three months, and you haven't heard a word."

Marcus shifted. The restaurant's centerpiece—a kitschy replica of the Great Sphinx—stared between them, its stone face frozen in that eternal, inscrutable smile. Riddle me this, it seemed to say. What do you call a marriage that died in slow motion while everyone kept smiling?

"The job offer," he said finally. "In Chicago."

"I'm not moving to Chicago."

"It's a promotion, Elena."

"It's another city where I don't know anyone, where you work eighty hours a week, where I fade into the background of your life like some accessory you picked up in grad school."

The waiter arrived with his drink—a violently orange concoction, paper umbrella bobbing. Marcus stared at it. "This used to be your favorite."

"I was twenty-two. Everything was my favorite then."

"What happened to us?" His voice dropped, barely audible over the restaurant's ambient chatter.

Elena looked at the sphinx, then at the man she'd spent seven years learning to stop seeing clearly. The riddle wasn't why they were ending. The riddle was why they'd pretended so long.

"We grew up," she said. "Just not together."

She signaled for the check. The orange sunset through the window painted everything in that brief, beautiful light before dark. For a moment, the sphinx seemed to wink.