The Sphinx's Last Riddle

The hospice room smelled of disinfectant and old paper. Arthur hadn't visited in six months—not since the fight at Marcus's wedding, when Arthur had called him selfish and Marcus had called him a coward. Now Marcus lay skeletal against the pillows, his orange cat Bast curled at his feet like a living comma of fur.

"Still reading that trash?" Arthur nodded at the paperback on Marcus's nightstand. The cover showed a woman weeping before a sphinx.

Marcus's laugh was a dry rattle. "It's not trash. It's about how the sphinx asks the wrong question. Should be: what loses everything the more you try to keep it?"

Arthur sat heavily. "Time."

"Friendship." Marcus's eyes found his. "Remember when we were twenty and swore we'd never become them? The men at office jobs with dead eyes and mortgages?"

"I remember you stealing my girlfriend."

"I stole her for a week. She came back. You never forgave me because she realized you'd never forgive yourself."

Lightning cracked the window, sudden as a slap, illuminating the tray of orange slices Marcus couldn't eat. Bast hissed, her tail twitching.

"You're dying," Arthur said.

"I'm living more than you are. I called because I needed you to know something." Marcus wheezed, pressing the button for morphine. "That night at the wedding. I wasn't talking about you."

Arthur stared. "What?"

"The selfish coward. I meant myself. I was dying then too, in my own way. I was angry because you got to have the life I wanted, and you were wasting it."

The silence stretched, filled only by the rhythmic beep of the monitor.

"I started smoking again," Arthur whispered. "After you got sick."

"That's not living."

"No."

Marcus's hand twitched toward Bast. The cat moved to his chest, purring loud as a small engine.

"The sphinx's answer," Marcus murmured, eyes closing. "Isn't man. Isn't time. It's love. You try to keep it, you kill it. You let it go, it stays."

Arthur sat with his friend's body for an hour after the monitor flatlined. When the nurse came, he couldn't remember which of them had been the coward. Only that some riddles have no answers—only the asking matters.