What the Sphinx Knows

The pool at the Desert Springs Resort was empty at 2 AM, the water still and black as ink. Elena sat on the edge, legs dangling in the chlorinated water, nursing her third gin and tonic. She'd come to Palm Springs for a wedding—her ex's wedding, because she was that kind of masochist—and found herself here instead.

"You look like someone trying to solve a riddle," a voice said from behind her.

She turned to find a man in his forties, handsome in that tired, expensive way that suggested he'd already lost everything that mattered once and was cautiously optimistic about the rest of his life. He held two drinks.

"The sphinx had nothing on me," she said, accepting the drink he offered. "I've got spinach stuck between my corporate smile and genuine happiness."

He laughed, a warm, surprised sound. "Marcus."

"Elena."

They sat together on the pool's edge, the desert air cooling around them. Marcus was here for a conference—something about mergers and acquisitions that he described with the heavy skepticism of someone who'd seen too many empires built and dismantled. Elena told him about the wedding, how the invitation had arrived like a grenade in her mailbox, how she'd booked the trip before she could talk herself out of it.

"Tomorrow morning," she said, "I have to sit in a room full of people who loved him first and better, smiling through the champagne toast, pretending my heart doesn't feel like it's been put through a blender."

Marcus studied his palm, as if the lines there might offer alternative futures. "You know what the sphinx asked? 'What goes on four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?'"

"Man. Crawling, walking, with a cane."

"Right. But nobody talks about the part where the answer doesn't matter. The sphinx ate people anyway."

She looked at him, really looked at him, in the way adults do when they're measuring someone's capacity for damage. "You think I should skip it."

"I think the spinach in your teeth isn't spinach. I think it's the part of you that already left him, years ago, and hasn't admitted it yet."

The pool lights flickered on suddenly, underwater illumination turning the black water blue. Something shifted between them—not the cheap possibility of a hotel fling, but the recognition of a fellow traveler through the wreckage of necessary endings.

"Stay with me," he said. "We can order room service and not go to the wedding. We can be the people who chose something else."

Elena finished her drink, setting the glass on the concrete. She thought about the sphinx, perched on its pedestal, guarding secrets that weren't really secrets at all. She thought about how some riddles don't have answers—only choices.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, let's."