The Riddle of Flesh

Maya hadn't expected to see him again—not here, not standing before the glass case containing the limestone Sphinx of Hatshepsut, its lion's body frozen in eternal watch, its human face worn smooth by three thousand years of impatient kisses from the desert wind.

She'd been about to reach out, her palm hovering inches from the glass, when she noticed the familiar slope of shoulders, the particular way his hair fell over his collar. David. The name settled in her chest like a swallowed stone.

She'd spent seven months trying to forget him, and now here they were, separated by glass and by history, both contemplating something that had outlasted every love affair that had ever existed.

"Spinach," he said, not turning around. "That's what you had in your teeth the first time we met."

Maya felt something unravel in her stomach. "You never mentioned it."

"I thought it was charming. Imperfect." He turned then, and his eyes were the same—warm, searching, entirely too knowing. "You're still doing that thing with your hands. Rubbing your thumb against your palm when you're nervous."

The sphinx stared on, its riddles unanswered. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? Humanity. Desire. The way love shapes itself differently across decades. At twenty, they'd been on hands and knees, desperate and clawing. At thirty, they walked tall, convinced they'd mastered the equation. Now, approaching evening, she wondered what third form they'd take.

"I'm married," David said. "Two years last month."

"I know. Facebook told me."

"And you?"

"Still single. Still terrible at spinach dip."

He laughed, and the sound was smaller than she remembered. "I looked for you, you know. After."

"After you chose her?"

"After I realized I'd made the wrong choice." He stepped closer, and she could smell the same cedar soap, feel the same gravitational pull she'd spent years trying to escape. "The sphinx ate those who couldn't solve its riddle. I think we just ate ourselves."

Her palm pressed against the glass now, leaving a fogged imprint that would vanish in seconds. That's what they were—fog on glass, brief and breathless and destined to disappear.

"I have to go," she said, but she didn't move.

"Me too. She's waiting outside."

Maya watched him walk away, watched him disappear into the museum's crowd, and understood finally the riddle she'd been trying to solve: some stories don't end. They just pause between chapters, waiting for a brave enough—or foolish enough—reader to turn the page.

She pressed her palm to the glass one last time, feeling the sphinx's ancient silence against her skin, and let herself remember what it felt like to be young enough to believe that love was something you could solve, rather than something you survived.