Riddles at the Bottom of the Pool

The swimming pool sat empty at 3 AM, its blue surface reflecting the half-moon like a cracked mirror. I leaned against the concrete edge, a beer in one hand, wondering why I'd volunteered to close the resort alone.

Three months ago, Maya would have been here. She'd sit cross-legged on this very spot, smoking cloves and watching the water, speaking in riddles that reminded me of the sphinx she'd once drunkenly compared herself to. "Answer my question or I eat you alive," she'd laugh, though the truth was closer to the opposite — she devoured you slowly, with kindness and confusion and those long silences where you couldn't tell if she was thinking about you or merely existing nearby.

"What's the difference between loving someone and needing them?" she'd asked, the night before she left.

I'd said something clever. Something wrong.

Now, from the maintenance shed, a radio crackled — the postseason game, eighth inning. Baseball had been Maya's unlikely passion. She'd loved its pastoral boredom, the way time seemed to suspend itself between pitches. She'd droned on about strategy and sacrifice, while I'd watched her hands, her mouth, the way she tilted her head when she was thinking about something that wasn't sports at all.

The announcer's voice swelled: a home run. Some player I didn't know, some moment that would mean everything to someone, somewhere.

I stared at the pool's dark bottom, where leaves and shadows gathered. The water had been drained for repairs, revealing the same emptiness she'd left behind. The sphinx's riddle wasn't about love versus need — it was about why we keep staring into things that only reflect our own loneliness back at us.

I finished my beer and tossed the bottle into the recycling bin. Maya was somewhere else now, probably asking someone else questions she already knew the answers to. And I would close up, go home, and wake up tomorrow to do it all again.

Somewhere in the distance, the crowd cheered. Another small victory in a long season of losses.