Riddles in the Seventh Inning
The seventh inning stretch arrived and I stood, mechanically singing along with strangers, while three rows down, a man proposed to his girlfriend. The crowd roared. She said yes. I sat back down and checked my phone—still nothing from Elena.
We'd come to this ballpark a dozen times when we were still just friends, back when the boundaries were clear and the stakes were low. She'd lean over during the seventh inning to whisper some conspiracy theory about the umpire, her breath smelling of cheap beer and mints. I'd laugh and pretend I wasn't falling in love with her.
Now she was gone, and the sphinx statue we'd seen in Egypt last spring—the one she'd called 'our riddle, baby'—seemed less romantic prophecy and more warning. Some questions don't have answers. Some riddles eat you alive.
'You think too much,' she'd told me the night she left. 'Even the cat knows when to stop chasing its own tail.'
Barnaby. The cat we'd adopted together, the one thing we couldn't bear to split. He was at her apartment now, probably asleep on her pillow. I missed him with a stupid, acute ache that felt almost like missing her. Maybe I missed them both the same way—creatures who'd known me, briefly, then moved on.
The baseball arced toward the stands. Someone caught it. The crowd erupted again, and for a moment, the sheer contagious joy of it lifted me out of myself.
Then my phone buzzed. Elena.
'Barnaby's been asking for you,' it read. 'Come over?'
The sphinx had spoken at last. Some riddles solve themselves when you stop trying to answer them alone.