Riddles in the Dark

The iphone screen lit their faces in blue pulses as they sat on opposite ends of the bathtub—a modern séance. She'd moved out three hours ago, but somehow they were both still here, clinging to the porcelain edge like survivors of a shipwreck.

"Remember when we bought that goldfish?" she asked, her thumb scrolling through photos of a fish that had lived two weeks, tops. "You said it was practice. For having something alive that depended on us."

"It was twelve dollars," David said. "We killed it with neglect. That's not practice, that's just—us."

The water had gone cold an hour ago. Elena's mascara had migrated south, leaving dark tracks like a topographic map of every fight they'd ever had. She looked at him now with that sphinx-like expression she'd perfected sometime around year four—inscrutable, knowing, asking riddles whose answers only she knew.

"What's the riddle this time?" he asked, voice rasping. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening? Because I'm pretty sure the answer is 'me, crawling back to you at 2 AM again and again until my dignity finally grows a third leg and walks away.'"

She laughed, actual sound breaking through, and splashed water at him. "You always think you're so clever. That's your problem. You think everything's a puzzle you can solve if you just find the right angle."

"Isn't it?"

"No." Her iphone buzzed on the tile—someone else, somewhere else, a life that didn't require solving. She didn't pick it. "Some things just are, David. Some fish die. Some water goes cold. Some people sit in tubs fully clothed because they can't figure out how to say goodbye to something that's already gone."

The goldfish had been named Challenger. David remembered that suddenly. Challenger, who had sw valled bravely for twelve days before floating belly-up, a tiny orange martyr to their mutual incompetence. Maybe that's what they were—two people who'd bought something alive together and learned, too late, that keeping it living was different from wanting it.

"I don't want a riddle," he said. "I want an answer."

"Answers are boring," she said, standing up, water dripping from her dress like she'd walked through rain. "That's why nobody ever falls in love with answers. They fall in love with questions."

She left him there with the cooling water and his sphinx-goddess reflection, the iphone buzzing again with someone who probably had better answers than either of them ever would.