The Sphinx in the Kitchen

The papaya sat on the counter, uneaten, its skin mottled with yellow and green like a bruise that wouldn't heal. Three days since she walked out, and the fruit she'd bought for our anniversary breakfast had ripened into something I couldn't bear to touch.

"You're like a sphinx," she'd said, standing in this kitchen with her keys already in her hand. "All riddles, no answers. I'm tired of guessing what you're thinking."

I hadn't said anything. That was the problem. That had always been the problem.

Now Marcus sat at my table, the one friend who'd show up unannounced with takeout and forced me to shower. He watched me stare at the papaya like it held the meaning of our eight years together.

"You going to eat that, or just gaze into its soul?" Marcus asked around a mouthful of pad thai. "Because I'm pretty sure fruit doesn't have the answers you're looking for."

"She called me a sphinx."

"A what?"

"A creature that asks riddles but never reveals itself." I picked up the papaya, its skin yielding slightly to my touch. "She said I spent eight years making her decode me, and she ran out of patience."

Marcus set down his carton. The restaurant's cheap orange plastic fork clattered against the table. "Well? Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Make her decode you?" His eyes were uncomfortably direct. "Because I've known you for twelve years, and I still don't know what happened to you in that fellowship program. Or why you haven't written anything since your thesis. Or why you're so convinced that if anyone actually saw you, they'd leave."

The papaya felt heavy in my hand, suddenly obscene in its ripeness.

"You think she left because she couldn't reach me," Marcus continued. "I think she left because she finally did."

He stood up and walked to the sink, rinsing his carton. The water ran for a long time.

"The sphinx got its questions from somewhere," he said, his back to me. "Someone taught it that being unknowable was safer than being known."

He turned around. "But you're not a mythological creature, man. You're just a guy who's scared that if he stops being a riddle, he'll stop being interesting."

Later, after he left, I cut into the papaya. It was overripe, sweet and fermenting at the edges. I ate it standing over the sink, juice running down my chin, finally tasting something without trying to analyze what it meant about me.