Riddles by the Pool

The pool at the Luxor Resort was empty at 3 AM, the water still as glass. Elena sat on the edge, her legs submerged, nursing a gin and tonic she'd bribed the night bartender to make. Her hair—what was left of it after the chemo—was covered by a silk scarf her daughter had sent, something with a peacock feather pattern that felt too jaunty for grief.

She'd come to Egypt alone. David had offered to come, of course. He'd packed their bags with that terrible efficiency of his, only to unpack them when she'd said, "I need to do this by myself." The word hung between them now, alongside all the others she couldn't say: recurrence. metastasis. hospice.

A cat materialized from the darkness—a scrawny thing with one ear chewed away—and regarded her with yellow eyes. It approached silently and butted its head against her calf. Elena reached down, her fingers tangling in its matted fur. "You're missing pieces too," she whispered.

They'd seen the Sphinx yesterday. Their guide had gone on about riddles and guardians, but Elena had only looked at the erosion on its face, the way time had worn smooth what must once have been fierce. She'd thought about how David would trace the worry line between her eyebrows with his thumb, like he could smooth her the way the desert had smoothed stone.

She thought about the dog they'd put down last year—Barnaby, who had slept at the foot of their bed for fourteen years. David had held him at the end, weeping into his golden fur. "How do you do it?" Elena had asked later. "How do you let go?" He'd shrugged. "You know when it's time."

But they didn't know. Neither of them knew. The doctors gave her six months, maybe a year. The Sphinx's riddle wasn't about what walked on four legs then two then four—it was about how to walk away from people you loved, how to leave them standing beside an empty pool at 3 AM while you disappeared into whatever came next.

The cat curled up beside her, purring. Elena finished her drink and stood up, water dripping from her legs onto the concrete. She would call David in the morning. She would come home. Whatever time remained, they would spend it together. Even the Sphinx, she realized, had endured. It had worn down but not disappeared.