The Riddle of the Glass Bowl

The goldfish had been dead three days before Marcus noticed.

"You know," he said, gesturing to the aquarium with his whiskey glass, "they're supposed to have three-second memories. Maybe that's a blessing."

I stared at the orange form floating near the filter. "Maybe he forgot he was dead."

Marcus laughed, but his eyes were studying me like I was something rare and fragile. That was the problem with Marcus—he saw too much. He saw how my marriage had become a series of unspoken agreements, how David's silences had grown from companionable to cavernous. How I'd learned to move through my life like someone walking through a room full of tripwires.

"Your husband," Marcus said, "is a sphinx."

"A sphinx doesn't have secrets. It has riddles."

"Same difference." He moved closer, his cologne mixing with the scent of stale tank water. "The question is whether you're still trying to solve him, or whether you've just stopped asking."

The warmth of his hand on my shoulder was dangerous. Marcus was the fox who'd slipped through the garden fence—clever, adaptable, entirely wrong for this carefully cultivated life. David would have seen him coming from miles away. David saw everything.

But David didn't see how I stayed up until 2 AM reading books I couldn't remember the next morning. How I'd started taking the long way home from work, not because the traffic was better, but because the extra twenty minutes were mine alone. How I'd become a different person in the gaps between what I said and what I actually meant.

"You're complicated," Marcus murmured against my neck. "In a way he stopped appreciating years ago."

"We're happy," I said, but I was thinking about the goldfish, swimming in endless circles, forgetting everything every three seconds. Maybe happiness was just that—forgetting what you'd lost.

"Then why," Marcus asked, "are you here with me instead of home with him?"

I didn't have an answer. Or maybe I had too many.

The riddle wasn't whether to stay or leave. It was how I'd managed to become both the creature asking the questions, and the one who'd forgotten there were any worth asking at all.