The Storm Between Us

The storm broke just as we reached the **pool**, a perfect metaphor for what remained of our marriage. Lightning fractured the sky above the desert resort, illuminating the **palm** trees that bent in the wind like defeated men.

"There's no signal," Elena said, waving her phone. "The **cable** is down. Everything is down."

I watched her from the lounge chair, nursing warm whiskey. She'd wanted this trip—to save us, to repair what seven years of silences had broken. Now we were trapped in Room 312 with nothing but our accumulated disappointments.

Earlier, I'd wandered the gardens and found a stone **sphinx** half-buried in sand, its face weathered smooth, its riddle lost to time. It felt like us. We had forgotten what we'd asked each other in the beginning. What was it? Love's first question, answered with certainty, now eroded.

Another flash of lightning. The pool reflected it, a momentary violence on the water's surface.

"Do you remember what you said?" I asked, not looking at her.

"When?"

"The night we met. That party in Brooklyn."

She sat on the edge of my chair. "I said I'd never fall for someone like you."

"And now?"

"Now I can't imagine someone unlike you." Her hand found mine. "The sphinx's answer, David. It's that we keep solving it. Every day."

The storm raged, but something in me settled. The cable would return. The lightning would pass. The sphinx would keep its secret, but perhaps that was the point.

I pulled her closer. "Tomorrow," I said. "We swim."