What the Sphinx Knows

Elena watched Marcus from across the pool, his silhouette cutting through the water like something determined and inevitable. He'd always moved like a bull - heavy, confident, blind to anything that wasn't directly in his path.

"You're staring," Sarah said, appearing beside her with two drinks.

"I'm not staring."

"You are. I've known you twenty years, El."

Elena accepted the wine. The dinner party had been Sarah's idea - something to get them out of the house, away from the conversations that went in circles and ended nowhere. Marcus had spent most of it talking to a younger woman in marketing, his hand on her back, his laugh too loud.

"He has spinach in his teeth," Elena said suddenly.

"So tell him."

"I won't."

"Why?"

"Because he won't care."

"Then why tell me?"

"Because you asked why I was staring."

Sarah didn't say anything.

The sphinx statue at the far end of the garden had lost its nose - something about vandalism from the previous owners, or maybe just weather. Elena had always liked it better that way. Something that asks riddles but can't smell the bullshit in the answers.

"He's going to leave me," she said.

"You don't know that."

"I know he bought a ticket to Barcelona. One ticket."

Sarah set her drink down on the coping. "When?"

"The flight is November 14th. He doesn't know I know."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to let him go."

"Elena-"

"No, listen. I spent fifteen years being the person who tells him about the spinach in his teeth. The person who fixes things. The person who makes everything work." She swirled her wine. "I'm tired of being the person who points out what's wrong. Let someone else do it. Let her do it."

Marcus was pulling himself out of the pool now, water streaming off him like he'd been baptized in his own certainty. He waved at them, not bothering with a towel.

A cat wound through the garden behind him - a sleek black thing that moved like something between spaces. It jumped onto the sphinx's shoulder and looked at them with eyes that seemed to know exactly how this story ended.

"He's going to ask you what's wrong when he gets over here," Sarah said quietly.

"I know."

"What are you going to say?"

Elena set her wine glass down on the concrete. "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Not one word. Let him figure it out. Or don't." She picked up her purse. "I'm leaving, Sarah. Tell him whatever you want."

"Elena-"

But she was already walking toward the gate, the sphinx watching her with its damaged face, the cat still perched on its stone shoulder like something that understood that sometimes the only riddle worth solving was how to finally walk away.