The Last Riddle of Cairo

The spinach wilted in my mouth, tasting of regret and cheap cigarettes. I was forty-two, running from a marriage that had died three years before I noticed, sitting in this diner across from the museum where she worked.

Across the street, the stone sphinx watched me through the plate glass, its worn face more knowing than any lover I'd ever known. Sarah had spent years studying that thing—its missing nose, its impossible questions—while I built a corporate pyramid scheme that collapsed under its own weight, taking my dignity with it.

"You bear a striking resemblance to someone who's given up," the sphinx seemed to say.

I checked my phone. No messages. The divorce settlement had left me with half of nothing and full custody of a loneliness I couldn't shake. My doctor had ordered the spinach, ordered the running, ordered me to give a damn about my heart—both kinds.

The diner door chimed. Sarah walked in, her coat wet from the rain, and my heart performed the familiar treacherous rhythm I'd spent three years trying to beat into silence.

"Still running from yourself?" she asked, sliding into the booth across from me.

"Still studying old riddles?" I countered.

She smiled—that rare, devastating smile that had undone me completely when we were twenty-three. "The sphinx asked me something today. 'What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?'"

"Man," I said. "Child, adult, elder with a cane."

"Wrong." Her fingers traced patterns on the Formica. "It's 'What breaks, then heals, then breaks again.'"

The spinach turned to ash in my throat. Outside, rain streaked the window like the world was crying for something it couldn't name.

"I got the fellowship in Cairo," she said quietly. "Three years."

I stared at the sphinx across the street, its limestone face bearing witness to another ending it had seen a thousand times before.

"Go," I said, and for the first time in three years, I meant it. "Go solve the riddle."