The Pool at Sunset

Maya floated in the hotel pool, the water cooling her sun-warmed skin. This was supposed to be their anniversary trip—the one where they'd decide whether to stay married or finally admit what they'd both known for years. But David had cancelled yesterday, citing an emergency at the firm. Another emergency. Always something more urgent than them.

She'd come anyway. The hotel was non-refundable, and she needed to not be in their apartment with its accumulated silence and things that belonged to both of them and neither of them.

That evening, she sat alone at the hotel restaurant, picking at a salmon filez with creamed spinach. The spinach was overcooked, mushy and grey—much like her marriage had become, she thought bitterly. A riddle without an answer, like the sphinx she'd seen in the museum last year, staring impassively at visitors with its stone eyes and impossible questions.

What kills a marriage slowly? Answer: the things you stop saying.

A man sat at the next table, close enough that she could smell his cologne—sandalwood and tobacco. He was reading, but she caught him glancing at her. She was forty-three, alone at a nice restaurant, wearing the dress David had said he liked but never seemed to notice anymore.

"The spinach is terrible," he said, smiling.

Maya surprised herself by laughing. "It really is."

He moved to her table. His name was Julian, an architect from London, also alone, also running away from something he wouldn't name. They talked until the restaurant closed, about sphinxes and riddles, about the things that hold us captive and the things that set us free.

Later, they stood by the darkened pool, water lapping softly against the tiles.

"I'm married," she said.

"I know," he said. "Your left hand is tan where the ring used to be."

She hadn't worn it in months.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she admitted.

"No one does," Julian said. "We're all just answering riddles in the dark."

He kissed her then, and for the first time in years, Maya felt something beside exhaustion and the dull ache of disappointment. She felt possible again.

The pool reflected the moon like liquid silver, and for one night, the sphinx remained silent.