The Riddle of the Burning Cat

Maya stood before the sphinx statue in the empty museum wing, her iPhone clutched in hand like a lifeline she couldn't quite bring herself to use. The notification light blinked—another message from David, her ex-husband, probably asking why she'd stopped responding to his texts about dividing their book collection.

"You look like you're solving a riddle," a voice said behind her.

She turned to find Elias, the night security guard, holding a styrofoam cup of coffee. His cat—a scrawny thing named Miso—sat perched on his shoulder like a chaotic familiar.

"Just feeling like a zombie," Maya admitted, surprising herself. She'd been working this consulting gig for fourteen months, helping museums optimize their "visitor engagement metrics." What she'd actually been doing was helping them figure out how to sell more tchotchkes in the gift shop. She was tired in her bones.

Elias nodded. "The sphinx ate my ex-wife, you know. Metaphorically. She got obsessed with solving unsolvable problems until there was nothing left of her but the asking."

"Is that why you work the night shift?"

"That," Elias said, "and I can bring Miso. Plus, nobody asks me what I'm doing with my life at 3 AM."

Maya's iPhone buzzed again. This time she looked. David's message: *I found that Sylvia Plath collection you loved. Do you want it?*

Something in her chest unlatched. She'd been waiting for David to ask about the books, hoping he'd remember which ones mattered. But asking was his weakness—he could ask beautifully, but he couldn't remember.

"What's the riddle?" Elias asked.

Maya looked at the sphinx, its stone face serene in the dim light. Then she typed a reply: *Give them to a library. Someone who still believes in riddles.*

"The riddle," she said, "is why we keep staring at what we can't have when what we need is already standing right beside us."

Elias smiled, and Miso leapt from his shoulder to the sphinx's stone paw, as if even a cat knew that some monuments were just furniture, after all.

Maya turned off her phone and put it in her pocket. For the first time in months, she wasn't waiting for something to happen.