The Riddle in the Rain

The cat watched me with golden, unblinking eyes as I stood in the kitchen, mechanically chopping spinach for a salad I had no appetite to eat. Three weeks after Sarah walked out, and I was still moving through my days like a zombie—present in body but hollowed out somewhere deeper, somewhere that used to hold something resembling purpose.

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, momentarily illuminating the ridiculous object she'd left on the mantelpiece: a ceramic sphinx she'd picked up in Cairo during that ill-fated business trip. I'd hated it when she brought it home—its enigmatic smile seemed to mock our increasingly strained silences. Now it sat there, gathering dust, riddling me with questions I couldn't answer.

The cat, Sarah's parting gift—because she was allergic, she'd said, as if that explained everything—jumped onto the counter and batted at a falling leaf of spinach. His name was Bucephalus, because she'd always had a penchant for dramatic names for ordinary things. Ordinary cats. Ordinary husbands.

I set down the knife. The spinach could wait. Nothing tasted like anything anyway.

Another flash of lightning, closer this time. The sphinx's smile seemed to widen in the sudden glare. What was the riddle? What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was man, but the real question was what happens when you forget how to stand up at noon.

Bucephalus brushed against my hand, purring loudly. Some force of habit made me scratch him behind the ears. He leaned into it, demanding more, and for the first time in weeks, something cracked open in my chest—not everything, but something.

The spinach was wilting. The sphinx was still smiling. The zombie in the kitchen realized he might, eventually, want to eat again.

I picked up the knife. The storm was breaking overhead, thunder rattling the windows, and for the first time since she left, I didn't reach for my phone to check if she'd called back. I just finished chopping the spinach.