The Riddle at the Pool's Edge

Margaret stood at the deep end of the hotel pool, clutching her glass of champagne with both hands. At fifty-three, she had stopped swimming years ago—the water felt too much like amniotic fluid, too much like returning to something she couldn't name. Instead, she watched.

"You're eating spinach with your hands," David said, appearing beside her. His hair had thinned since the divorce, but his eyes still held that sphinx-like quality—part mystery, part judgment, all the more infuriating for their calm.

She looked down at her fingers, stained green from the canapé she'd decimated. "It's texture. The crunch against bone reminds me I'm still alive."

"You always were dramatic." His orange linen shirt was too bright for October, too hopeful for a room full of people who'd given up on hope.

They were at the retreat center where her third husband had left her three years ago. She'd come back for closure. Instead, she'd found spinach dip and David.

"The riddle of the sphinx," she said suddenly, the champagne warming her blood. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?"

"Man. Everyone knows that."

"But what if the answer is just—pain?" She turned to him fully. "What if it's the ways we carry it? Crawling when we're young, walking tall when we think we're invincible, then leaning on canes and memories and second chances when we realize we're not?"

David's expression shifted. The sphinx softened.

"I still think about you," he said. "In the pool at our apartment. The way the water made your hair float around your face like a halo. You looked like you were drowning, but you said you were just—listening."

"I was listening to the water," Margaret said. "It was the only thing that never lied to me."

The band began playing something from the seventies. People started dancing, awkward and beautiful and hungry.

"Swim with me," David said.

"I don't swim anymore."

"Then stand in the shallow end with me. Let the water come up to your waist. Let it be something you can control."

Margaret set down her champagne. The spinach stain on her thumb looked like a bruise, like a map of where she'd been.

"Fine," she said. "But if I go under, you're not allowed to save me."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said. "I'd just dive in after you and see what's down there too."

She took off her shoes. The pool lights flickered beneath the surface, orange and blue and green, like jewels in a tomb. Like riddles she was finally ready to answer.