What the Sphinx Knows

The pool at the Cairo Marriott shimmered like crushed diamonds in the dying light. Elena sat at the edge, her legs submerged in water that felt too warm, too artificial, like everything about this conference.

Marcus stood three feet away, scrolling through his iPhone, the blue light casting shadows across his face. He'd been doing that for hours—checking emails, checking stocks, checking anything but her.

"You have spinach in your teeth," she said, just to break the silence.

He frowned, rubbed his jaw with his thumb, checked the reflection on his phone screen. "Where?"

"Left side. From lunch."

"Got it." He wiped, checked again. "Better?"

"Perfect."

They both looked at the sphinx statue across the pool deck, a replica that had somehow become more real than their conversation. The stone creature's face wore the same inscrutable smile it had worn for three thousand years of original corpses, watching couples fall apart in languages that would turn to dust.

"My mother called again," Marcus said, finally pocketing the phone.

"And?"

"She wants us to come for Christmas. She said—"

"She said what?"

"She said she's not getting any younger, El. She said she's watched three of her friends die this year. She said she doesn't want to die without really knowing her son's wife."

Elena felt something crack inside her chest. She'd known Marcus for seven years, married for three, and somehow his mother had never said anything like that before. Never said she wanted to know her. Never said she was lonely. Never said she was afraid.

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her we'd think about it. But really, I told her we probably couldn't. Because of your work, my work, the flights, the cost—"

"Marcus."

"What?"

"Look at me."

He did. For the first time all day, really looked at her. His eyes were the same warm brown she'd fallen in love with in that coffee shop in Seattle, but now they looked tired, guarded.

"We have money for Christmas," she said. "We have vacation days. We have a marriage, theoretically. What we don't have is time."

He stared at her. Behind him, the sphinx seemed to smirk.

"Your mother is afraid of dying without knowing me," Elena continued. "And I'm afraid of dying without knowing your mother. And you're afraid of something too, aren't you?"

Marcus dropped his eyes. The water lapped against Elena's calves.

"I'm afraid," he said quietly, "that if we go back there, if we really let them in, I'll remember why I left in the first place. And then I'll have to choose. And I don't know if I'd choose you."

The silence that followed was huge and empty. A waiter walked past with a tray of cocktails, pretending not to notice the two people at the pool who were not speaking.

Elena stood up, water dripping from her legs onto the concrete. "Then we have a different problem, don't we?"

"El—"

"No. Listen to me. Your mother will die someday. Maybe this year, maybe in ten. And I will too, and so will you. The sphinx has watched thousands of us do it, and she doesn't care either way." She gestured at the stone statue. "But somewhere between your emails and your mother and whatever this marriage has become, we forgot that part. We forgot we're going to die."

Marcus's phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn't reach for it.

"So what do we do?" he asked.

"We go to Christmas," she said. "We let your mother in. We figure out if you choose us or them. And we stop pretending we have forever to decide."

Marcus looked at his pocket, looked at the sphinx, looked at his wife. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

Above them, the first stars appeared, ancient and indifferent, as the pool's lights flickered on, turning the water into something that looked almost like gold.