The Riddle at the Bar

Marcus found Elena at their usual dive bar, staring at a sphinx moth fluttering near the cigarette machine. She'd been his work friend for seven years—the kind of friend you don't choose, exactly, but accumulate like scar tissue.

"He left," she said, not looking up. "David. This morning."

Marcus signaled the bartender for another round. David was her husband of twelve years. The sphinx moth bumped against the glass, confused by its own reflection.

"Did he say why?"

"Said he couldn't do it anymore. The riddles." Elena laughed, bitter and sharp. "That's what he called them. My questions about where he'd been, why his phone was always off. He said I was like a goddamn sphinx, demanding answers he couldn't give."

Marcus thought about the vitamin D supplements on his own nightstand, the therapist suggesting he might be depressed, the way he'd been canceling plans for months. We were all hiding something.

"Maybe he couldn't," Marcus said carefully. "Give the answers."

Elena finally turned to him, eyes wet and furious. "Or maybe I stopped wanting to know. Maybe the riddle was better than the solution."

She pulled a bottle from her purse—prescription vitamins, orange plastic with child-proof cap. Popped two, dry swallowed.

"These are supposed to help," she said. "With everything. Mood, energy, sleep. But I think I just like the ritual. The illusion that something small can fix something large."

The sphinx moth had given up and settled on the rim of her glass, dust-white wings trembling in the draft.

"David wasn't a riddle," Marcus said. "He was just a man who made a choice."

"And what are you?" she asked, not unkindly.

"A friend," he said. "Who's going to buy you another drink before you tell me what you're actually going to do."

She smiled then, something breaking in her face, something new. "I'm going to stop asking questions I don't want answered," she said. "Starting with tonight."

Outside, the city hummed with all the things people kept from each other. But here, in the amber light, between friends who knew too much and too little, there was only the clink of glasses and the delicate, stubborn flutter of wings.