Riddles in the Sand

Marcus sat by the pool at the Palm Springs resort, his iPhone buzzing on the table like an insistent insect he couldn't bring himself to swat away. Three unread emails from Linda—his ex-wife's lawyer, not Linda herself.

His father had loved baseball. Had taken him to Dodgers games every Sunday until the cancer made sitting in plastic seats for three hours impossible. "The key," his father would say, watching a pitcher shake off signs, "is knowing when to throw the strikeout pitch and when to walk the guy. Sometimes you win by not fighting."

Marcus had never learned that lesson. He fought for everything. Fought for the partnership that went to the bull of a man who called himself his mentor but stole his clients. Fought for the marriage that had been dead since the miscarriage two years ago.

He got up and walked to the far end of the pool, where a concrete sphinx glared out at the desert. Some tacky ornament left over from the resort's Egyptian phase in the nineties. But up close, the creature's face was beautiful and terrible all at once—the riddle it offered not written in stone but in the way its eyes seemed to hold every question Marcus had been too afraid to ask himself.

What is it that loses something every time it speaks? The old riddle. His father had known the answer before he died. Silence, he'd said. Because in silence, you still have the possibility of words.

Marcus looked at his palm—measuring his life line, the way his grandmother had taught him. Short, she'd said when he was twelve, which meant he wouldn't live to old age. But she'd died at forty-two, so maybe she'd been reading her own future too.

The iPhone buzzed again. This time a text from the bull himself—offering him his old clients back if he apologized.

Marcus picked up the phone. For a moment, he almost replied. Instead, he powered it down. The sphinx watched him, inscrutable. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind moving through the palm trees, sounding like the ocean his father had promised to take him to see but never had.

Some riddles you solve by walking away.