The Riddle of Empty Rooms

The sphinx sat on her windowsill, a brass paperweight with one wing slightly bent, watching me pack. Elena had bought it in Egypt years ago—"the keeper of secrets," she'd called it, though the only secret it ever kept was how easily things could break.

"You don't have to do this," she said from the doorway. Her orange sweater, the one I'd given her three birthdays ago, hung loose on her frame. She'd stopped eating well two months ago, around the time the promotion fell through and the sleeping pills stopped working.

I didn't answer. Some things don't deserve answers.

Her cat, Prometheus, wound between my legs, purring. He'd chosen me the night we met, jumping onto my lap at that terrible dinner party, ignoring everyone else. Elena had laughed, said it meant I was good. But cats are opportunists. They know who's leaving.

"I found the messages," I said finally.

The silence stretched. Outside, autumn stripped the trees bare.

"It wasn't like that," she said. "He was—during that time when my mother was sick. It wasn't real."

"It was enough."

The sphinx's chipped wing caught the light. Elena had loved imperfect things: injured birds, damaged friends, me. The way she loved was a beautiful sort of destruction, chipping away at whatever she touched until it fit her needs. I'd let her, wanted her to. Wanting someone to remake you is its own kind of surrender.

I zipped the duffel bag. The sound was final as a gunshot.

She peeled an orange then, her movements practiced and calm. The scent filled the room, bright and impossible. Citrus against the smell of endings. She separated a section and held it out to me, like peace, like forgiveness, like I could still be someone who accepted things from her hands.

"Please," she said.

I looked at the sphinx, its riddle mouth frozen in something like a smile. The answer to any riddle worth asking is that you can't. You simply can't.

I left without the orange, without the cat who'd finally stopped purring, without the woman who taught me that love is not about being chosen but about staying after you've been left. Outside, the air was cold and smelled of rain and other people's lives beginning again.

That was three years ago. I still think of her when I see oranges. The sphinx sits on my desk now. I still don't know what it's asking. I still don't have an answer.