Riddles by the Pool

The Egyptian sun beat down on the infinity pool at the Mena House, turning the water into something that looked like molten glass rather than a refuge. Elena sat on a chaise lounge, her martini sweating onto the marble beside her, watching her husband across the water where he laughed with something that looked too much like genuine joy.

Thirty years of marriage and she'd only just learned—six weeks ago—that David wasn't in insurance. He was a spy. Not the tuxedo kind, either. Corporate espionage, selling secrets to whoever paid best. The sphinx he'd become was riddle-free: she knew exactly what he was now.

A palm frond stirred above her, casting a single wavering shadow across her face like a question mark.

"You're thinking again," David said, appearing beside her with two fresh drinks. His smile was the one she'd fallen in love with in college, back when the future felt like something that happened to other people. "We're on vacation, El. That's the rule."

"I'm remembering," she said, accepting the glass. "When we didn't know things."

David's face went still. The pool lapped against its edges in the silence.

"I did it for us," he said finally, and the terrible part was she believed he believed it.

"You did it for you," she corrected him gently. "Then you convinced yourself it was for us. There's a difference."

She looked past him at the Great Pyramid visible in the distance, at the restaurant tables filling up around the pool, at the palm trees standing witness like indifferent sentinels. Somewhere in that crowd was the woman David had been meeting with—the handler, the contact, whatever she was. Elena had seen them together at the bar in Cairo two nights ago. Hands touching. Mouths forming words across the small table that needed no lip-reading to interpret.

"So what now?" David asked. He looked, for the first time, afraid.

Elena set down her drink. She thought about their daughter, who was getting married in the fall. She thought about the life they'd built—was any of it real? Had there ever been a time when David hadn't been lying to her?

"Now I finish my drink," she said, "and then I go home without you. The sphinx has another riddle for you, David: who are you when nobody's watching?"

He reached for her hand. His palm was damp against hers. She let him hold it for a moment—long enough to be cruel, short enough to be kind—before she pulled away.

By the time he returned from the bar with her second martini, Elena was gone. Only her glass remained on the marble coaster, a single olive slowly sinking in the melting ice.