What the Sphinx Knows

Maya stood in the bathroom, the fluorescent light catching the amber bottle of prenatal vitamins in her hand. She'd been taking them for eight months now, a small daily ritual of hope that had curdled into something else entirely.

In the living room, Barnaby—their golden retriever, or really, now, just her golden retriever—whined at the door. The sound went through her like glass.

"He's here," Maya called, though Barnaby already knew. The dog always knew. His tail thumped against the floorboards, a metronome counting down the minutes until David would walk through the door, collect his things, and leave this apartment they'd shared for six years.

She swallowed the vitamin without water, a dry lump in her throat.

When she opened the door, David stood there with a cat carrier. Inside sat a sphinx cat, naked and pink and strangely regal, its ears too large for its alien head. The cat watched Maya with eyes the color of storm clouds.

"This is Cleo," David said. "My roommate's cat. She's watching her while I—that is, while I'm staying there."

While I'm staying there. He couldn't even say it: while I'm living there now, while I've moved on, while our life together has become something I visit with a cat carrier in hand.

"She's beautiful," Maya heard herself say. And the cat was, in her weirdness. Vulnerable without her fur, but proud of it too.

Barnaby pressed himself against David's legs, and for a moment, David's hand dropped to the dog's head, his fingers threading through the golden fur. The familiar gesture, the automatic love. It made Maya want to scream. Instead she watched the sphinx cat watch them all with those storm-colored eyes, as if the creature knew something they didn't.

"You forgot your vitamins," Maya said. "The bottle's in the medicine cabinet."

David's hand stilled on Barnaby's head. "I don't need those anymore."

The silence that followed was absolute. Somewhere in the apartment, a clock ticked. Barnaby stopped thumping his tail. The sphinx cat closed its eyes.

"Right," Maya said. "Of course."

She watched him walk away with the cat, the strange naked creature cradled against his chest like something precious. Like something new. Like something that wasn't their life together, their hopes, their shared understanding of who they would become.

Later, when she let Barnaby out for his evening walk, she saw the dog sniff something in the hallway—a trace of David, or the cat, or whatever came next. The winter moonlight through the window made Barnaby's coat shine like something mythical, something that might have answered riddles once, in another world.

Maya swallowed another vitamin. She didn't know what she was hoping for anymore. She only knew that some sphinxes didn't ask questions—they simply watched, and waited, and knew.