The Sphinx by the Pool

The rooftop pool of the Athenian hotel shimmered like liquid mercury in the midday heat. Elena floated on her back, her dark hair fanning out around her like ink in water, watching the clouds drift across an impossibly blue Greek sky. At forty-two, she'd learned that sometimes the only way to stay afloat was to stop swimming against the current.

"You've been out there for an hour," Mark called from the cabana, his voice tight with that particular blend of concern and resentment that had come to define their marriage. He was fifty-three, salt-and-pepper hair thinning at the crown, forever checking his watch even on vacation.

Elena didn't respond. She was thinking about the stone sphinx she'd seen in the hotel garden earlier that morning—a weathered creature from the late 1800s, some wealthy Victorian's souvenir from Egypt. The sphinx's riddle had always seemed cruel to her: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? The answer was man, but the real riddle wasn't about aging. It was about how you could love someone and still not recognize them by noon.

"Elena."

She paddled to the edge and pulled herself up, water cascading from her skin. "I'm thinking about leaving you."

The silence stretched between them, thicker than the humid air. Mark set down his whiskey glass slowly.

"Because of what happened at Christmas?"

"Because of what happened every Christmas for fifteen years." She climbed out of the pool, water dripping from her hair onto the hot concrete. "Because I'm swimming laps in circles, Mark, and I don't think I can do it anymore."

He looked smaller suddenly, less certain. The sphinx watched from the garden, its stone face inscrutable, bearing witness to another human unraveling.

"What would you do?" he asked quietly. "Where would you go?"

"I don't know. But that's the point, isn't it? The sphinx's riddle wasn't about the answer. It was about having the courage to ask the question."

Elena wrapped herself in a towel and watched the pool's surface smooth over, already forgetting she'd ever been there. Somewhere in the distance, church bells began to ring, and for the first time in years, she heard them clearly.