What the Goldfish Forgot

The Egyptian exhibit was nearly empty at closing time, just Maya and Elias standing before the granite sphinx, its weathered face somehow more expressive than either of them had been in months.

"You're doing it again," Maya said, not looking at him. "That thing where you disappear inside your head."

Elias's thumb moved across his iphone screen, scrolling through emails he'd already checked three times. "I'm not disappearing. I'm working, Maya. You know, the thing that pays for this apartment we never talk in."

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, illumination flooding through the museum's high windows like divine judgment. The sphinx's shadow elongated, reaching toward them both.

"Remember when we got that goldfish?" Maya asked suddenly. "The one that lived for three years? We used to joke it had a three-second memory, swimming the same circle, delighted by the same plastic castle every time."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Because that's us, Elias. We swim the same circles, fight the same fights, forget why we started and just keep swimming. But goldfish don't know they're trapped. We do."

Another flash of lightning, closer this time. Thunder rattled the glass.

Elias finally looked up. "You think we're trapped?"

"I think the sphinx asked better riddles than we're asking ourselves." Maya turned toward him, eyes reflecting the storm outside. "What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? And what is the marriage that dies twice before either person leaves?"

The iphone buzzed in Elias's hand. He looked at the screen, then at Maya, then at the ancient stone creature between them.

"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it. "I don't know the answer to the second one. But I know I don't want to find out by becoming one of those couples who stays together because leaving would require too much courage."

Maya's hand found his, fingers cold. "Then we have to stop swimming in circles."

The sphinx watched them both, its eternal silence somehow kinder than any answer either could have given. Outside, the storm broke, rain finally washing over the city.