What the Sphinx Forgot

Maya found Leo on his fire escape, baseball glove on his left hand, cigarette in his right. The city stretched beneath them like a bruise.

"You're going to miss," she said.

Leo didn't turn. "The game ended three hours ago."

"That's not what I meant."

He'd been her friend since college, since the night they'd stolen a plastic sphinx from someone's lawn and driven it ninety miles north, convinced it held the secret to everything. They were twenty-two and drunk on the possibility of becoming people who mattered. Now they were thirty-four, and the sphinx sat on his bookshelf, chipped and knowing.

"Your mother called," Maya said. "She's worried about you."

"She's always worried." Leo flicked the cigarette. It spiraled downward, a tiny firework against the dark. "She thinks I should find someone. Start a family. Like there's a script I'm supposed to be reading from."

"And you think there isn't?"

He laughed, and the sound caught in his throat. "Maya, have you ever looked at a goldfish? Really looked? They swim in circles. They forget where they've been every three seconds. They think they're always discovering something new. What if that's us? What if we're just—what if we're doing the same loops and calling it progress?"

"That's the most pretentious thing you've ever said to me."

"I'm serious." Finally, he looked at her. His eyes were red-rimmed, tired in a way that sleep couldn't fix. "I feel like I'm carrying something. Like there's this—this bear on my chest. And I can't put it down."

Maya thought about the sphinx in his apartment. The riddle it couldn't answer: how to live when you'd already given up on trying.

"Leo," she said softly. "You can't remember who you were. You're not the goldfish. You're the tank."

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he started to cry, silently, face turned toward the skyline. Maya sat beside him on the fire escape, their shoulders touching. Below them, the city kept burning, indifferent to every small grief.

"Stay tonight," he said when he could speak again. "Please."

"Okay," said Maya, who had always known she would. "Okay."