Riddles in the Shallow End

The coaxial cable lay severed on the living room floor, a silver snake cut mid-hiss. Marcus stared at it, the way he'd stared at everything since Elena left — with a kind of hollow fascination, as if the broken objects in his apartment were artifacts from some alien civilization.

His iPhone buzzed on the counter, its screen lighting up with Jamie's name for the third time that evening. A friend who'd become something more, then something less, now circling back like a boomerang he'd forgotten how to catch.

"Pick up," Marcus whispered, but his hands stayed in his lap.

They'd met at that rooftop party in July, the one where everyone was swimming in cheap wine and pretension. Jamie had been the only person not performing something — not cool, not ironic, not detached. Just present, which in that crowd was its own kind of rebellion. They'd ended up at an afterparty at the Egyptian museum, drunk and giddy before the Great Sphinx of Tanis, its limestone face serene and inscrutable at 3 AM.

"It's all about the riddle," Jamie had said, tracing the hieroglyphs with a finger. "The sphinx ate anyone who couldn't solve it. Maybe that's why we're all so afraid to ask real questions anymore."

Marcus had almost kissed them then. Didn't.

Now Jamie was calling, and Marcus was thinking about sphinxes and riddles and the way some questions get heavier the longer you carry them. The cable was still on the floor, and Elena's keys were still in the bowl by the door, and he was still swimming in this apartment full of objects that knew him better than he knew himself.

He let it ring through to voicemail. Then, because some instincts override others, he called back.

"The sphinx," Marcus said when Jamie answered. "What was the riddle again?"

Silence on the line. Then Jamie's voice, softer than he expected: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening."

"Man," said Marcus. "We crawl, we walk, we lean."

"Most people forget the last part," said Jamie. "That we all end up needing something to hold us up."

Marcus looked at the severed cable, at the silent television, at the dust motes swimming in the amber light of the streetlamp outside.

"I'm leaning now," he said.

"I know," said Jamie. "That's why I called."