The Sphinx's Last Laugh

Marcus stood at the edge of the infinity pool at six in the morning, the only guest awake at the Sharm el-Sheikh resort. Fifty years old and three months divorced, he'd booked this trip because the travel agent promised transformation. Instead, he found himself swimming alone in chlorinated water, watching the sun rise over the Sinai Peninsula like a bruised peach.

His ex-wife had always made fun of his tendency toward existential melodrama. "You're not in a French film, Marcus," she'd say, rolling her eyes while he complained about the meaninglessness of corporate consulting. Now she was probably dating someone who didn't see metaphors for human suffering in breakfast buffets.

Yesterday's excursion to the Great Pyramid had been a disaster. The guide had insisted everyone could feel the ancient energy, but Marcus had only felt claustrophobic and nauseous, like he was trapped inside his own life's inadequate architecture. The other tourists had taken selfies, their faces distorted by the same filter that made everyone look simultaneously younger and somehow less real.

"You look like someone who's seen the Sphinx's riddle and didn't like the answer," a woman said from behind him.

Marcus turned. She was maybe forty, wearing a floppy sun hat that covered half her face, holding a plate of wilted spinach from the breakfast bar. Her name was Elena, a landscape architect from Barcelona who'd come to Egypt to photograph desert plants but kept getting distracted by the absurdity of luxury resorts in the middle of nowhere.

They spent the next six days together. They swam in the Red Sea, made love in her room with the balcony door open so they could hear the wind, and ate terrible spinach salads at overpriced restaurants. Elena didn't ask about his divorce or his job or his sudden inability to find meaning in anything.

On his last night, they sat on the beach drinking cheap wine. "The Sphinx," she said, "supposedly asked: 'What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?' The answer is man, crawling as a baby, walking as an adult, using a cane in old age. But I think the real riddle is: at what point do you stop waiting for your life to begin?"

Marcus watched the waves, feeling something shift inside him—subtle, almost imperceptible, like sand settling after being disturbed.

"Tomorrow," he said.

Elena kissed him, and for the first time in years, he didn't feel like he was drowning.