Poolside at the Sphinx

The pool at the Sphinx Hotel had seen better decades. Its turquoise paint peeled in lizard-scale patches, and the water smelled of chlorine and accumulated regrets. Elena sat on a lounge chair wearing her mother's wide-brimmed garden hat, the one with the silk flowers still stubbornly intact after thirty years of attic storage. She was waiting for her husband to finish packing their suite upstairs—the suite they'd booked every anniversary for seventeen years, until this year, when he'd announced he'd fallen in love with someone named Sarah from accounting.

A man approached from the adjacent cabana. He was perhaps forty, with the kind of handsome that required careful maintenance. His hair was perfectly tousled, his linen shirt impeccably pressed.

"They say the Sphinx was built to guard secrets," he said, gesturing toward the hotel's ridiculous faux-Egyptian façade. "But mostly, it just keeps people out."

Elena adjusted the hat, suddenly aware of how ridiculous she must look. "I'm not here for riddles."

"Everyone's here for riddles." He sat on the neighboring chair without invitation. "Why we stay. Why we go. Why your husband is upstairs with his phone turned off, texting someone who isn't you."

Elena's chest tightened. "You've been watching me."

"I've been where you are." He reached into his pocket and removed a small pyramid—chess piece, paperweight, she couldn't tell. "My wife left me at this hotel three years ago. Same pool. Same terrible hat I wore to hide the fact I'd been crying."

The wind picked up, and Elena had to press her hand against the hat's brim. "Did it get better?"

"Some things don't get better. They just get different." He placed the pyramid on the table between them. "The Sphinx asked Oedipus what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. The answer: man. But the real question wasn't about legs. It was about how we're always becoming something else, whether we want to or not."

Above them, a balcony door opened. Her husband's voice carried across the pool area, bright with new love. Elena reached for the pyramid, her thumb finding its sharp edges.

"You're not staying at the hotel," she realized. "You're the new manager."

"I am." He stood, smoothing his linen shirt. "And you're checking out."

Elena removed the hat and set it on the lounge chair. She felt lighter, somehow. The pool's water caught the afternoon sun, turning momentarily gold.

"Yes," she said. "I suppose I am."