The Riddle of Us

The cable guy left three hours ago, taking with him the only distraction I had from the truth sitting across from me. Maria watched me with those inscrutable eyes, a sphinx in our cramped living room, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and the smell of stale coffee.

"You've been distant," she said, not a question but an observation calibrated to wound.

I rubbed my face, feeling like a corporate zombie after another sixty-hour week at the firm. My phone buzzed in my pocket—the team group chat, probably. Always the team. Never us. "I'm just tired, Maria. You know how the project's been."

"I know how *you've* been." She picked at the hem of her sleeve. "I found the receipt, David. The hotel room. Two weeks ago when you said you were visiting your mother."

The baseball game I'd been half-watching became a roar of white noise. Outside our building, a car backfired like a distant gunshot.

"It's not what you think," I started, then stopped. Because she was my wife, and I was legally bound to this woman who'd become a stranger, but more importantly—I *was* sleeping with my supervisor. Not that night. Others. And worse: I'd been gathering intel on my own company for a rival firm, a low-level spy in the corporate wars that devoured men like me and left nothing but hollowed-out shells.

The irony struck me then—I was a terrible spy, but an excellent actor. I'd been performing intimacy for months while my real life unfolded in stolen moments and encrypted messages.

"The baseball game," I said, suddenly desperate. "Remember when we met? At that bar in Wrigleyville? You were wearing that Cubs cap backward, and you told me you'd sell your soul for a World Series win."

She almost smiled. The sphinx cracked. "I was twenty-two and drunk, David. That was eight years ago."

"I loved you then," I said. "Some part of me still does."

"Some part," she repeated. "Not enough."

She stood, gathering her coat and keys. I watched her go, and for the first time in months, I didn't feel like a zombie, or a spy, or a man waiting for his real life to begin. I just felt hollow—a sphinx without a riddle, staring at a blank television screen, knowing some endings aren't really endings at all, but necessary amputations.