The Sphinx at the Omni

The first time Maya saw him, she was swimming laps at the Omni Hotel pool, counting strokes to keep the crying at bay. Two months since David walked out, and still she'd forget and reach for him in the night, waking to empty sheets and the realization that she was thirty-seven and starting over.

The man watched her from the jacuzzi—dark hair slicked back, expensive suit on the chair beside him. Something about his stillness unnerved her. A spy, she thought, then laughed at herself. Paranoia, or maybe just the romance novels she read to fall asleep.

"You swim like you're escaping something," he said later at the hotel bar.

"Maybe I am."

"Marcus." He offered his hand. "I assume you're not here for the conference."

"Maya." Their fingers touched. "And you'd assume correctly."

They ended up in his room—she hated herself for it, this desperate grasping at someone who might make her feel visible again. But Marcus was different. He knew things about her he shouldn't know. How she took her coffee. The scar on her shoulder. That she'd once wanted to be an architect.

"You're good at reading people," she said, tracing the hair on his chest.

"It's my job."

"Job?"

He hesitated. "Corporate intelligence. Industrial espionage, if you want to be dramatic."

Maya laughed. "So I slept with a spy."

"You're the one who's been crying every night at the pool. The desk clerk told me. Said you come here every Saturday since your husband left."

She pulled away. "You investigated me?"

"I noticed you. There's a difference."

The sphinx fountain in the hotel courtyard—some pretentious art installation—cast weird shadows through the window. Riddle me this, Maya thought. When does loneliness become permission to stop caring about consequences?

She found out later he'd been hired by David's company. That's why he was at the Omni. That's why he'd noticed her—her name had come up in background research on the ex-wife of the VP they were investigating for embezzlement.

Did it matter? Maybe she'd known all along. Some sphinx-like part of her had whispered: use this, let him use you, drown in it for a while.

She never saw Marcus again after that weekend. But sometimes, swimming at the Omni, she'd catch herself watching the door, waiting for another spy with dark hair and questions he shouldn't ask.

The riddle wasn't whether he'd used her. The riddle was why she'd let him.