What the Sphinx Knows

The apartment felt too large with just me and the silence. Sarah had taken the cat—Bast, she'd named her, after the Egyptian goddess—leaving me with the dog. Max, elderly and arthritic, thumped his tail against the floorboards, his loyalty absolute despite my failures.

I stood before the reproduction of the Sphinx I'd bought in Cairo years ago, during that last trip where we'd still pretended things were salvageable. The limestone face stared back, enigmatic as ever, eroded by time like something I should have learned to accept.

"You know," I said to the room, to the dog, to anything that might be listening, "the riddle wasn't 'what walks on four legs in the morning.' That's the easy part. The real question is what happens after."

Max sighed, resting his chin on his paws.

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen counter, white and terrifying as bone. Sarah had left them there three days ago with a note: 'I'm tired of guessing answers to questions you won't ask.'

The Sphinx had guarded its secrets for millennia. I'd guarded mine for barely twelve years of marriage. There was a difference between mystery and evasion, and I'd learned it too late.

I poured a drink, considered calling her, then didn't. The cat would be curled on her lap now, purring, indifferent to my absence. That was cats—practical creatures who understood that affection was transactional. Dogs like Max would wait forever, faithful to a fault, loving whatever remained.

Humans were neither. We oscillated between devotion and self-preservation, caught in some middle space where devotion was a choice and loyalty a burden.

The reproduction Sphinx watched from its shelf. Its original had seen empires rise and fall, lovers meet and part, countless agonies of the human heart rendered insignificant by sand and time. What was one divorce beside the relentless march of history?

"Well," I said, setting down the glass. "At least you're not laughing."

Outside, the city hummed with lives that continued regardless. Inside, I petted Max's graying muzzle and tried to imagine a future that didn't feel like an answer I'd gotten wrong.

The Sphinx said nothing. It never did. That was the point.