Riddles in the Orange Light

You find him where you left him three years ago—perched on his fire escape with that riddle of a tattoo between his shoulder blades. The sphinx, wings spread, asking questions you never knew how to answer. His skin's gone translucent in the meantime, like something washed out by too many days inside.

"You came," he says, and doesn't turn around.

"You asked." You join him on the rusted metal, setting a grocery bag between you. The building's shadow stretches across the city, that particular orange hour when everything looks like it might be forgiven.

He's thinner than you remember. The vitamin bottles on his kitchen table—D, B12, something that tastes like chalk—have multiplied like small armies. His hands shake when he lifts the tumbler of water you've brought, condensation slick on the glass.

"The riddle," you say, because you've never been good at not saying things. "The sphinx. What walks on four legs, then two, then—"

"Then three," he finishes, turning. His eyes are the same, which feels unfair somehow. "The answer's a man. But the real question is who's carrying him."

Something twists in your chest. You're thirty-four and your best friend is dying and you're arguing about Greek mythology on a fire escape in Queens.

"I'm not carrying anyone."

"Aren't you?" His smile's tired, fond, terrible. "You show up with oranges and vitamins. You sit in hospitals. You come when I call. That's not friendship. That's palliative care."

The orange sits between you, bright against the rust. You peel it because your hands need something to do. The spray hits your wrist, citrus-sharp. You offer him a segment and he takes it, but his fingers barely press against yours.

"Maybe," you say, "maybe friendship is just caring that happens to last until the end."

He considers this, chewing slowly. The sun's going down now, the orange light turning everything gold and improbable.

"Then what's after?" he asks. The sphinx on his back seems to wait, wings poised for an answer you don't have.

You watch the water tower across the street catch the last light, its bulbous shape strangely tender against the darkening sky.

"After," you say, "someone else carries me."

He laughs, startled, and the sound catches in his throat like hope.

"Fair," he says. "That's fair."

You sit there as the city lights come on below, suspended in that particular moment between knowing and losing, holding an orange like a promise you're not ready to break.