The Sphinx at Midnight

The bull market died on a Tuesday, taking with it David's marriage and whatever remained of his faith in predictable futures. Forty-two years old, staring at a trading floor gone suddenly quiet, and all he could think about was the sphinx.

Not the mythological creature—his daughter's college mascot, absurd and perfect. She'd emailed him that morning: "Dad, the sphinx is missing. Some drunk fraternity brothers stole it."

He should have been angry about his portfolio. Instead, he was driving toward Middlebury, running from a life that had dissolved in margins and volatility.

The campus was ghostly in dawn fog. He found the graffiti-covered statue behind a dumpster, lying like a fallen god. David wrapped his coat around it—this ceramic riddle-creature that had endured worse indignities than his own— bore its weight across the parking lot, driving with a sphinx riding shotgun like some absurd metaphor for his entire fucking year.

He'd been swimming in debt and denial, the way he always had.

His daughter met him at the security office. "You stole it back?"

"I rescued it," David said, and they both started laughing, the terrible relieved laughter of people who've survived something they can't yet name. Behind her, the sun rose over mountains that had stood forever unmoved by markets or marriages or the tiny absurd dramas of human lives.

"Want to get coffee?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "But first, we need to figure out where the sphinx belongs."

She smiled, and for the first time in months, something in his chest unclenched. "Dad, the sphinx never belonged anywhere. That's the whole point."