What the Sphinx Never Asked

The spinach wilts in my cart, a tangled mess of green that reminds me of Tuesday dinners with Marco — his laughter echoing off the tiny apartment walls, the way he'd insist on adding too much garlic. Three months since the funeral, and still I reach for the phone to share some meaningless observation before remembering the line is dead.

A sphinx sits on Marco's balcony, or at least the concrete statue of one he'd dragged home from some estate sale, chipped wing and all. We used to smoke on that balcony and debate what the creature would ask if it could speak. Marco always said it wouldn't be about legs or mornings — sphinxes were ancient, they'd ask the questions that actually matter. What did you fail to give? Who did you love imperfectly?

My own cat, Barnaby, weaves through my legs as I unlock the front door, demanding dinner with the imperial entitlement of all his kind. Marco never liked cats. Said they were like people who've already figured out they don't owe you anything.

The truth is, Marco and I weren't even speaking when he died. Some workplace nonsense, a promotion I got that he thought he deserved, and suddenly twenty years of friendship evaporated over spreadsheets and performance reviews. We were thirty-four years old, acting like children.

I stand in the kitchen, rinsing spinach that's already begun to yellow, remembering Marco's voice: 'You know what the real tragedy is? Not that the sphinx eats you when you get it wrong. It's that you think you're supposed to know the answer in the first place.'

Barnaby jumps onto the counter, stares at me with those liquid gold eyes that contain absolutely no forgiveness, only the present moment in its terrifying completeness.

I dump the spinach in the pan anyway, watch it steam down to nothing, and finally call Marco's mother. She'll ask how I'm doing, and I'll lie, and somewhere in that exchange, perhaps, is the only riddle that matters: how to keep living when part of you has already answered its last question.