Electric Riddles

The hotel pool was empty at midnight, the water black as spilled ink. Maya swam laps, her body cutting through the silence while David sat poolside, nursing whiskey from a plastic cup. They'd come to repair their marriage, but three days in, the silence between them had grown heavier than the humidity.

A storm was brewing offshore. Lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the palm trees in strobe-light flashes.

"You're going to drown yourself," David said, not looking up from his phone.

Maya stopped swimming, treading water in the center of the pool. "I'm fine."

"You've been at it for an hour."

She floated onto her back, staring up at the dark clouds. "Remember when you used to swim with me?"

"I'm not twenty-five anymore, Maya."

No, he wasn't. Now he was thirty-eight, and he slept with his iphone under his pillow. Now when it buzzed at 3 AM, he rolled away from her to answer.

She'd become a sphinx in their marriage—posed with impossible questions, watching him puzzle through lies that fell apart under scrutiny. The riddle wasn't whether he was cheating; she'd stopped caring months ago. The riddle was why he stayed.

Maya swam to the edge and pulled herself up, water streaming off her body. David's eyes flickered over her, then returned to his screen.

"Work," he said, though it was Saturday.

"Of course."

She walked past him toward the hotel room, dripping wet, not caring about the water on the tile. She was done asking questions. She was done waiting for lightning to strike—the kind that either destroys everything or illuminates the truth.

Behind her, his phone pinged.

Maya kept walking. Some riddles solve themselves when you stop trying to solve them.