The Riddle in the Bowl

The goldfish circled his glass prison, orange scales flashing like a warning light Maya couldn't quite read. She'd inherited him from Daniel, along with the studio apartment that still smelled faintly of his cigarettes and that particular brand of pretentious coffee he'd sworn was "really quite exceptional, if you'd just give it a chance."

Three months after the breakup, the goldfish was the only living thing who'd stuck around.

The sphinx had been Daniel's parting gift—a small limestone replica he'd bought at some overpriced museum gift shop, claiming it represented "eternal mysteries and the eternal feminine, whatever that means." He'd left it on her windowsill with a note: *For the woman who never answers my questions.*

Maya had placed the sphinx next to the fishbowl. Sometimes she imagined them in conversation—the sphinx asking its impossible riddles, the goldfish opening and closing his mouth in silent response.

At work, her boss was a sphinx of another sort. Elena sat in her glass-walled office, asking questions that weren't really questions, expecting answers that weren't really answers. Today she'd called Maya in and asked, "What do you think happens to the people we used to be?"

Maya had nearly laughed. Instead she'd straightened her hat—a charcoal felt thing she'd bought the week after Daniel left, as if a different accessory could make her a different person—and said, "I think they become part of the people we are now."

Elena had nodded slowly, as if Maya had actually said something profound instead of what she'd really meant: *I think we survive them until we don't have to anymore.*

That evening, Maya moved the sphinx to a shelf. The goldfish watched her, mouth opening, closing. A riddle without an answer. A question without a question mark.

She took off her hat and set it on the table. Something inside her loosened, like a knot finally coming undone.

"You know," she told the fish, "I never liked riddles anyway."

The goldfish swam to the surface, opened his mouth once, and disappeared behind the castle.

Some things, Maya decided, didn't need solving. They just needed swimming past.