The Riddle of Us

The cat jumped onto the dresser, knocking his iPhone off the nightstand. Screen cracked, spiderweb fractures blooming like frozen lightning across the digital photo of her smiling face.

"That's the third one this year," Maya said from the doorway, her voice flat. She was holding his dog's leash, the golden retriever panting beside her.

"It's the cat," James started, then stopped. The excuse felt hollow even to his own lips.

They'd been having this conversation for months. Or maybe years. The grievances piled up like unread notifications—emails left unanswered, promises left unfilled, the slow erosion of intimacy until they were just two people occupying the same space, ships passing in a hallway.

"You're always looking at that thing," she said. "Always somewhere else. Even when you're here."

"I'm working, Maya."

"You're scrolling."

The dog whined, sensing the tension. James felt a sudden wave of something—guilt, exhaustion, the recognition of a pattern he couldn't break. He'd become his own riddle, a creature without answers, human only in shape.

In the silence, he remembered their trip to Egypt. The Great Sphinx rising from the sand at Giza, half-lion, half-human, eternally asking questions that no one could answer. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? Man. The answer was always man, crawling, then walking upright, then leaning on a cane in the descent toward death.

He was thirty-five, firmly in the noon of his life, and he'd forgotten how to stand up straight.

"The sphinx asks better questions than I do," he said aloud.

Maya stared at him. "What?"

"The riddle. The answer. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I don't know what we're doing."

The cat wound between his legs, purring. The dog sat, tail thumping a hopeful rhythm against the floorboards. Outside, the city hummed with the urgency of millions of people trying to matter.

"We could start with the phone," she said quietly. "We could start by being here."

He looked at the cracked screen, at her frozen smile. Then he looked at the real woman standing in front of him, tired and patient and still here despite everything.

"I'll put it in the drawer," he said. "For tonight."

"Tomorrow," she said. "We can worry about tomorrow tomorrow."

The cat curled up on the bed. The dog followed her out. And for the first time in months, James didn't reach for his phone before falling asleep.