What the Sphinx Wouldn't Say

The papaya sat on our hotel room dresser, rotting in the Cairo heat. I'd bought it two days ago from a market vendor, convinced that if I just made the right gestures—bought the local fruit, learned the Arabic words—Egypt would give up its secrets to me.

Marcus lay in bed, shirtless, scrolling through emails on his phone. The pyramid of Giza was visible through the window, a perfect triangle against the dusk.

"The Dean wants a decision by Friday," Marcus said, not looking up. "About the tenure track."

I thought about the riddle of the sphinx I'd read that morning: What walks on four legs, then two, then three? The answer was man—first crawling, then walking upright, then with a cane. But the sphinx had a second riddle, one most translations omitted: There are two sisters. One gives birth to the other, and she in turn gives birth to the first. What are they?

Day and night.

That's how Marcus and I had become.

"He offered me something," I said. Marcus scrolled. "A junior curator position. Less money, but it's mine. No committees."

Marcus laughed, that dismissive bull-in-a-china-shop sound that had charmed me seven years ago in graduate school. Now it just felt like something fragile was about to break.

"You're not actually considering it. Not after everything."

"I don't know. The papaya's good here," I said, which wasn't what I meant.

He looked up then. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I walked to the window. The sphinx of limestone and sand sat below the pyramid, its damaged face staring at nothing. It had once asked riddles and devoured those who couldn't answer. Now it just sat there, its riddle forgotten, its purpose eroded by time.

"The papaya's good here" meant I was tired of being wrong about things. It meant I'd rather rot on a dresser in the heat than stay cold and preserved in your refrigerator.

"Nothing," I said.

But Marcus knew. He always knew. He stood up and came to the window, and we watched the sphinx together in the failing light, neither of us saying what we both understood: some riddles don't have answers, only the asking, over and over, until the asking itself becomes the answer.

The papaya would need to be thrown away. But not yet.