The Riddle of Disconnection

Marla's sphinx statue stared at me with limestone eyes as I dug the trench for the fiber optic cable. It was a reproduction, obviously—cracked at the base, moss growing in the riddle-carved lips—but something about its worn gaze felt judgmental.

"Her husband bought it in Egypt," Marla said from her patio, cigarette smoke trailing from her fingers like a question mark. "Before the dementia took the riddles from him."

I nodded, throat tight with thoughts of my own unraveling marriage. Three weeks since Elena moved out. Since she'd said I was emotionally constipated, that I couldn't solve a riddle if it was written on my forehead.

Marla's golden retriever, Buster, nosed my thigh. I scratched behind his ears, his solid warmth anchoring me.

"The cable will be faster," I said, wrapping the coaxial ends. "You'll be able to video call your daughter in London."

"And what?" Marla's voice cracked. "Watch her not pick up?"

I stripped the wire with practiced hands, copper threads gleaming like hope. "Connection's worth something. Even if it's just possibility."

She was silent. I finished the job, tested the signal, packed my tools. Buster followed me to the gate.

"Stay for a drink?" Marla called.

I almost said no. Almost retreated to my empty apartment with its silent walls and unpacked boxes. But the sphinx seemed to dare me.

We drank cheap chardonnay by the pool. Marla told me about her husband's last coherent day—how he'd sat by this same pool, reciting riddles he couldn't solve anymore, weeping at his own fading mind. I told her about Elena's packed boxes, how I'd found her pregnancy test in the trash two days before she left, negative, the defeat of it final.

"Life's a riddle without an answer," Marla said.

I stripped to my boxers and slid into the pool. The water shocked my skin, and for a moment I was swimming through something deeper than chlorinated water—swimming through all the things I couldn't say, all the riddles I couldn't solve. Buster barked from the edge, and Marla raised her glass to the sphinx.

"Maybe that's the point," I said, surfacing. "Living with the question."