The Riddle at the Table

Maya watched the goldfish swim lazy circles in its bowl on the windowsill, its orange scales catching the last light of evening. She wondered if the fish truly had a three-second memory, or if that was just something people told themselves to feel superior. If she could forget everything every three seconds, maybe she wouldn't be sitting across from Daniel right now, watching him push spinach around his plate with the kind of deliberation usually reserved for defusing bombs.

"You haven't touched your wine," she said, and her voice sounded too loud in the silence of their apartment—the apartment they'd signed a lease on exactly eight months ago, when they still believed in the currency of optimism.

Daniel looked up, his expression as inscrutable as the sphinx he'd once described to her during that weekend in Cairo, before the promotions and the commuting and the slow erosion of whatever they'd called this thing between them. "I'm thinking."

"About?"

"Whether this conversation is worth having."

Maya felt her palm go sweaty against the wineglass. She'd known this was coming. The way he'd been coming home later, the way his phone stayed face down on the nightstand, the way he looked at her sometimes like she was a photograph of someone he used to love.

She remembered the woman from his office—the redheaded assistant with the sharp laugh and the clever way about her, the one Daniel had called a fox in that tone of voice that was supposed to be casual but wasn't quite. Not then, anyway.

"Say it," Maya said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you're not saying."

Daniel set down his fork. The spinach on his plate formed a small, wilted mountain. "I met someone."

The words landed like stones in water. Maya waited for the ripples to settle, for the three seconds to pass and memory to reset itself, for the goldfish to swim around the bowl and make everything new again.

But time didn't work that way. Not for humans. Not for her, sitting in the apartment they'd furnished together, surrounded by the artifacts of a life that suddenly felt like an archaeological dig.

"Is it," she started, then stopped. "Is it the redhead?"

Daniel didn't answer, which was answer enough.

Outside, the city hummed with other people's problems. The goldfish kept swimming, oblivious to the architecture of heartbreak being erected at the dinner table. Maya thought about riddles and secrets and the way some questions, once asked, changed everything permanently.

She picked up her wineglass and drained it in one swallow. "Well," she said. "That's that, then."

The goldfish bumped against the glass, startled by the sound of her fork clattering to the floor.