The Riddle in the Bathroom

The water in the bathtub had gone cold an hour ago, but Elena couldn't bring herself to drain it. She sat curled amid her own pruned skin, watching the single drip from the faucet break the surface—a tiny, rhythmic suicide.

"You've been in there for three hours," David said from the doorway. He didn't enter. He never entered anymore.

The sphinx of their marriage sat between them: who had stopped loving whom first? The question had defined their last six months, a riddle with no answer, only variations of silence. Elena had stopped asking. David had stopped apologizing. They moved through their shared apartment like ghosts haunting separate lives.

Their cat, a ragged calico they'd rescued in Cairo during that last good year, jumped onto the bathroom counter. She walked delicately around David's shins, then began drinking from the leaking faucet. Even the cat had learned to survive on whatever scraps of affection remained.

"I'm going back to Egypt," Elena said, the water lapping at her chin. "Next month. I've already booked the ticket."

David's expression didn't change. He'd become expert at this—neither surprised nor indifferent, merely present. "For work?"

"For myself."

The calico stopped drinking and fixed them both with yellow eyes, as if witnessing something ancient and inevitable. Elena realized then that some marriages don't end in explosion or betrayal. They erode like limestone beneath wind and water, until one day you look up and the landscape has changed entirely.

"Will you come visit?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.

David shook his head almost imperceptibly. "You know I hate the heat."

Elena finally stood, water streaming off her body. She stepped out of the tub and reached for a towel. The cat wound through her legs, purring, and for a moment, Elena wished she could be satisfied with that small warmth, that simple devotion. But some sphinxes cannot be solved, only abandoned.

"Then I suppose this is goodbye," she said.

David nodded once and turned away. The bathroom door clicked shut behind him, and for the first time in years, the silence felt like peace rather than suffocation.