Riddles by the Water

Marcus sat by the hotel pool at sunset, nursing whiskey he'd overpaid for at the bar. His iPhone lay face-down on the table, screen lighting up every few minutes with texts he couldn't bring himself to answer. Work emails. His sister checking in. Her, again.

He'd flown to Chicago for the funeral, but the service had been hours ago and he couldn't make himself return to the reception. Instead, he'd ended up here, watching the water ripple in the artificial current, thinking about David.

They'd been friends since third grade, back when friendship was as simple as trading baseball cards at recess. David had collected them religiously—Marcus remembered the smell of the wax packs, the sweet stick of gum inside, how they'd sit cross-legged on the playground debating which players were cursed, which were destined for greatness. That was before curses became real things that happened to real people.

David had gotten sick three years ago. The kind of sick that doesn't get better. And through it all—the treatments, the remissions, the final decline—he'd kept working on his art piece. A massive Sphinx sculpture for a downtown gallery. "It's about the riddles we can't answer," he'd told Marcus during his last hospital visit, his voice thin but his eyes bright. "The ones that destroy us if we can't solve them, and the ones that save us when we finally stop trying."

Marcus's iPhone buzzed again. This time he turned it over. A text from Elena: *Are you coming back? People are asking where you are.*

She'd been David's girlfriend for two years. Marcus had introduced them. Now she was sleeping in the guest room of David's apartment, surrounded by his half-finished sculptures, and Marcus was sleeping on the other side of the city in this overpriced hotel with its chlorinated pool and silent elevators.

What had David asked him that last day? Something about how the Sphinx's riddle wasn't a test at all—it was a gift. The question was the point, not the answer. Some questions you lived inside. Some you carried like stones in your chest.

He ordered another whiskey and thought about David's Sphinx, half-carved in his studio. Maybe that was the riddle—the Sphinx itself, unfinished, its mouth forever closed around words it would never speak.

His phone lit up one more time. Elena: *The gallery called. They want to finish the Sphinx. Show it anyway. He would have wanted that.*

Marcus picked up his phone and typed back: *I'll be there in twenty minutes.*

Outside, the pool lights flickered on, casting long shadows across the water. Somewhere in the city, a Sphinx waited for its face, and somewhere else, a friend was waiting for him to remember that unfinished things could still be true.