Riddles in the Dark

The pool table at O'Malley's had seen better nights. Sarah chalked her cue with deliberate precision, the blue dust coating her fingertips like the powdery makeup she'd stopped wearing months ago. Across from her, Tom watched with that familiar mixture of desire and condescension that had defined their ten-year marriage.

"Your shot," he said, gesturing with his baseball cap — the same worn one he'd worn since college, when his brief minor-league career had taught him everything about failure and nothing about humility.

The 8-ball sat precariously near the corner pocket, a dark moon in orbit. Sarah leaned over the felt, her silk blouse gaping slightly, catching Tom's eye. She knew he was looking. She also knew he'd pretend he wasn't. That was their dance.

"You know what the sphinx asked Oedipus?" she said suddenly, standing up without taking the shot.

Tom blinked, confused by the non sequitur. "What?"

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening." She ran her hand across the table's green expanse. "Man. Crawling, walking, leaning on a cane. We're all just riddles waiting to be solved, aren't we?"

"Jesus, Sarah. You've been drinking."

"I've been thinking." She finally struck the cue ball. It kissed the 8-ball perfectly, sending it spinning into the pocket with a satisfying click. Game over. "About the water under the bridge. About how some things don't wash away."

She walked around the table to where he sat, perched on the edge like a bird ready to take flight. Sarah took his hand, turning his palm upward. The lines there were deep, etched by years of gripping steering wheels and baseball bats and everything else he thought he could control.

"The fortune teller in Cairo said I'd meet my destiny in a place of green tables and broken dreams," she whispered, close enough that he could smell the gin on her breath. "She said the sphinx would appear, not with riddles, but with silence."

"Sarah—"

"I'm leaving, Tom. After this." She squeezed his hand, his palm warm against hers. "Not tonight. But soon. The question is: are you going to let me walk away, or are you finally going to ask me to stay?"

The sphinx had asked Oedipus a riddle. But the true riddle, Sarah realized, wasn't what walked on four legs or two or three. The riddle was how two people could share a bed for a decade and still be strangers. And the answer wasn't something you solved — it was something you chose.

Outside, rain began to fall, water drumming against the bar's windows like fingers demanding to be let in. Tom looked at his wife — really looked at her — for what might have been the first time in years. His palm lay empty in hers, waiting.

The sphinx remained silent. Some answers, after all, had to be spoken aloud.