Riddles in the Desert

The sphinx had been staring at me for three days, its limestone face eroded into something that looked suspiciously like disappointment. I lit another cigarette, the smoke curling up toward the Egyptian sky, and thought about how far I'd fallen from that night at Dodgers Stadium.

'You're going to be somebody,' Sarah had said, her palm soft against mine as we watched the baseball game from the cheap seats. 'I can feel it.' She'd always believed in that crap—palm reading, horoscopes, the universe having a plan. I'd believed in her.

Now she was emailing me divorce papers and I was drinking warm whiskey in Luxor, hiding out while my law firm decided whether to make me partner or scapegoat.

The water in my glass rippled. A tourist group moved past the excavation site, their guide gesturing at the half-unearthed sphinx like it was nothing more than another photo opportunity. I'd been brought in to consult on the legal implications of some artifact dispute—busywork, really, while the partners decided my fate.

'You look like a man waiting for something to happen.'

I turned. An old Egyptian woman stood there, her face a map of wrinkles. She reached for my hand before I could pull away.

'You've built walls,' she said, tracing the lines on my palm. 'Like the sphinx. Riddles inside. Secrets you won't even speak to yourself.' She looked up, her eyes terrifyingly clear. 'The baseball game—that's where you lost something. Not the game. Something else.'

My chest tightened. She continued, 'Water can wash away the past. Or it can drown you in it.' She pressed something into my palm—a small stone scarab. 'The choice is yours.'

That night, I sat by the pool and called Sarah. Not about the divorce. About everything else—about how I'd stopped being the person she believed in somewhere between law school and billable hours. About the secrets I'd been keeping from myself.

'I don't know if I can find him again,' I said.

'The riddle isn't about finding,' she said. 'It's about accepting what's already there.'

I hung up and walked back to the sphinx. For the first time, it didn't look like it was judging me. It looked like it was waiting.

I threw the whiskey bottle in the trash and called the partners. I told them I'd take the fall for the botched case. I told them I was done pretending to be someone I wasn't.

The old woman was right. Some riddles you don't solve. You just learn to live with them. And sometimes, that's enough.