The Last Dive

The sphinx stared at me with chipped paint eyes, its limestone face cracked from thirty years of desert sun. I sat at the edge of the pool, dangling my feet in water that had gone stagnant weeks ago, when the last guests checked out and never returned.

"You're going to talk to me now?" Sarah's voice came from behind me. She'd been doing that lately—appearing without sound, like she was practicing how to leave without anyone noticing.

The sphinx didn't answer. Neither did I.

"The corporate decision comes down tomorrow," she said, sitting beside me but not close enough that our shoulders touched. "They're liquidating. Everything goes."

"Including us?" The question slipped out before I could catch it.

She didn't respond. Instead, she pointed at the horizon where a dog—a stray that had been haunting the property for weeks—limped along the perimeter fence, searching for a gap that wasn't there. "He's still trying to get in."

"There's nothing left for him here."

"Maybe he remembers what it used to be like."

I closed my eyes and let myself remember: the sound of laughter echoing off these tiled walls, the scent of coconut sunscreen and chlorine, the way Sarah looked when we first started—when this resort was something we were building together, not something we were dismantling piece by piece.

The sphinx had been my idea. A centerpiece for the courtyard. I'd thought it would give the place character. Instead, it became a monument to my hubris.

"I saw them today," Sarah said quietly. "The buyers. They're going to tear it all down. Turn it into a conference center."

"Good," I said. "Maybe something new can grow here."

She reached over and took my hand, her fingers cold against my palm. The dog finally found the gap in the fence we'd both been pretending not to notice. It slipped through and stood by the pool's edge, watching us.

"Some things," Sarah said, "keep trying to come back."

The sphinx watched silently as the dog drank from the pool we'd both been drowning in for years.