Riddle in the Rain

The baseball field stretched out before Arthur like a green bruise against the purple sky. He sat alone in Section 12, same seat as every Thursday for three years, his crushed fedora pulled low over eyes that had seen too much and not enough.

He'd come because the hair on his head was the only thing that grew faster than the silence in his apartment. Here, among strangers cheering for men who'd forgotten their dreams, he could pretend to be something else.

Lightning cracked—a spine of white fire down the spine of the world—and for a moment, everything stopped. The players froze like posed figures. Then the sky opened.

No one moved. They sat watching as rain blurred the chalk lines into meaninglessness.

"A sphinx," a woman's voice said beside him.

Arthur turned. She was maybe thirty, with hair the color of dusk, watching him with eyes that saw everything. "The riddle you're carrying. It's eating you alive."

He should have been startled. Instead, he felt something crack open inside him, like a door long stuck.

"My wife left me," Arthur heard himself say. "Three years ago today. This is where we met."

"And you're still waiting."

"The riddle," she said softly, "is why you're the only one who doesn't know you've already solved it."

The hat in his hands suddenly felt ridiculous. He took it off.

Rain soaked his thinning hair, cold and perfect. The baseball game had dissolved into nothing worth remembering, and somehow, that was everything.

He looked at the empty seat beside him. Then at the woman, who was already walking away, swallowed by storm and night.

Arthur stood up. He didn't look back.