The Riddle By The Pool

David sat by the hotel pool at 3 AM, the water still and glass-like, reflecting the moon he'd stopped noticing years ago. In the distance, a radio crackled with a baseball game — some overnight replay, Dodgers versus Mets, a meaningless match in a season that stretched too long. Beside him lay his iPhone, screen dark, refusing to illuminate with the message he'd been waiting three days to receive.

He'd come to this writer's retreat at the Sphinx Hotel in Sedona to finish his novel, but mostly he'd been staring at the wall and remembering how Julia used to stand in their kitchen, stirring creamed spinach at the stove, humming something that sounded like forgiveness. "You're married to your work, not me," she'd said the morning she left, and the words had lodged in his throat like something he couldn't swallow.

The hotel's namesake — a concrete sphinx rising from the desert floor — guarded the entrance, its stone face wearing that eternal inscrutable smile. What riddle had it solved? What riddle could he solve? His phone buzzed. Not Julia. His agent, asking about revisions. The pool's surface rippled in the wind, distorting his own reflection until he couldn't recognize himself anymore.

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?" The sphinx's ancient question echoed through the dry desert night. David realized suddenly that he'd been answering it wrong his whole life. It wasn't about stages of life — it was about the versions of ourselves we shed, the skins we left behind.

He typed Julia's name into the search bar on his phone, watched their shared history surface: wedding photos, that time they'd danced by a friend's pool in Cleveland, the afternoon baseball games where she'd kept score and he'd kept thinking about plots. The spinach recipe she'd pinned. The last message: "I can't compete with ghosts."

The radio announcer's voice carried across the water: "And there it goes, folks — a home run that changes everything." David stood up, pocketing his phone. The sphinx smiled in the moonlight, its secret finally clear. Some riddles don't have answers. Some just have choices.

He walked toward the hotel, leaving the pool's still waters behind. Tomorrow he'd catch the first flight home. Tomorrow he'd choose something real.