The Sphinx Waits

The fedora felt ridiculous on my head, a costume piece for a thirty-five-year-old man pretending to be someone else entirely. I adjusted the brim, checking my reflection in the gallery window. Inside, Sarah was already there, standing beneath the monstrous Egyptian sphinx she'd imported for tonight's exhibition — limestone wings spread, human face frozen in that eternal, knowing smile.

"You look like you're trying too hard," she said, not turning around. The sphinx seemed to be watching her back, its stone eyes gleaming under the gallery lights.

"And you look like you're selling your soul for this opening," I replied, though my voice lacked its usual bite. I fished in my pocket for the vitamin D supplement — doctor's orders for someone who spent too much time indoors, avoiding the sun.

Sarah finally faced me, her expression unreadable, much like the sphinx behind her. "It's a job, David. One that pays enough that I don't have to choose between rent and sanity. Not everyone can live off their trust fund while writing poetry that nobody reads."

The words stung because they were true, or close enough to it. We'd been friends since college, two art students dreaming of changing the world through beauty and provocation. Now she curated antiquities for billionaires who treated history like furniture, and I wrote poems in notebooks I never showed anyone.

"The sphinx riddle," I said, changing the subject. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. We used to joke it was about the art market itself."

"No," she said softly. "It's about aging. About becoming less, not more." She gestured at the stone creature. "This thing was made to guard tombs. To keep secrets. That's what we become, David. Keepers of our own disappointments."

The music swelled — something experimental and dissonant. I swallowed the vitamin dry. It tasted like regret.

"I'm leaving," she said. "New York. The gallery offered me their Chelsea space. I leave Tuesday."

The sphinx continued its silent vigil, its riddle unanswered. I tipped the brim of my ridiculous hat, feeling suddenly ancient. "You should go," I said. "Before I tell you I would've followed you anywhere, if you'd only asked."

She didn't respond. She turned back to the sphinx, leaving me to adjust my hat alone in the crowd, one hand in my pocket, clutching a vitamin like a prayer, the other already forgetting the shape of her name.