What the Sphinx Asks

Marie and I met at the padel court every Tuesday, our ritual continuing three months after the papers were signed. We played in silence mostly—just the rhythmic thwack of the ball against the glass walls, our breath misting in the October air.

We'd divided everything: the house, the accounts, the friends. But the sphinx statue we'd bought in Egypt remained in the garage, its limestone face smoothed by centuries of wind, its riddle carved into stone we'd never bothered to translate. Neither of us wanted it, yet neither could part with it.

"You're sleeping with someone," I said during a changeover, not a question. My dog, Buster, lay by the bench watching us, his tail thumping against the concrete. Our cat, Isis, sat in Marie's apartment window across the street, a white comma against the glass.

Marie wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. "Does it matter?"

"No." I served. The ball hit the glass and fell untouched. "But the sphinx would ask."

"The sphinx asks nothing." She hit the ball back, harder than necessary. "That's why we bought it. So something in this house wouldn't demand answers."

That was the thing about Marie—she could turn even a breakup into philosophy. I'd fallen in love with that quality twelve years ago in a graduate seminar. Now it felt like she was speaking a different language.

Buster wandered onto the court, investigating my racket. I scratched behind his ears, his fur warm and alive against my palm. At least some bonds couldn't be severed.

"Next week," Marie said, "I'm not coming."

I nodded. I should have felt relief. Instead I felt the familiar weight of all the questions we'd never asked settle across my shoulders like a shroud.

"What happens to the sphinx?" I asked.

Marie considered this, really considered it, her head tilted like the statue itself. Then she smiled, tired and genuine at once.

"We leave it there," she said. "Let the next owners translate the riddle."

I watched her walk away, Isis appearing in the window as if summoned. The sphinx waited in the garage, patient as stone, as Buster and I stood alone on the court where everything had ended but nothing had finished.