Sphinx at the Net

The ball hit the padel court with a satisfying thud, echoing in the enclosed space.

Sweat trickled down Mark's spine as he tracked the trajectory, his racquet meeting the ball with precision. Sarah stood at the net, her back to him, face illuminated by the ghostly glow of her iPhone even in the harsh fluorescent lighting. They'd come here to reconnect, or that's what she'd said when booking the court, but already thirty minutes had passed and she'd checked her phone seven times.

"You could just put it away," Mark said, not quite keeping the edge from his voice.

The ball sailed past him, unreturned.

"Just one email," Sarah murmured, thumb flying across the screen. "Crisis at work."

Like the sphinx guarding its riddle, she offered only cryptic explanations lately. Crisis. Emergency. Can't talk now. He'd stopped asking what the crises actually were. Maybe there weren't any. Maybe the real crisis was whatever had settled between them like the dust on the unused treadmill in their garage, thick and suffocating.

Another serve. He missed.

Mark wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Five years ago, they'd played padel on their honeymoon in Marbella, laughing until their sides ached, collapsing onto the bench together, mouths salty with sea air and desire. Now they played in separate universes — him in the physical world of running and swinging and breathing, her in the blue-lit dimension of whatever demanded her attention on that godforsaken rectangle of glass.

"You know," Mark said, walking to retrieve the ball from the corner, "the sphinx asked riddles before she destroyed you. She didn't just ignore you to death."

Sarah looked up then, phone finally lowered. Her expression was sphinx-like indeed: inscrutable, ancient, withholding its secrets.

"What?"

"Nothing." Mark served again. The ball hit the wire mesh fence behind her. She didn't turn to watch it bounce. "Nothing at all."

That night, as he lay in bed listening to the soft chime of her iPhone charging on the nightstand — a sound that had become the metronome of his loneliness — Mark understood something. The sphinx's riddle wasn't what thing walked on four legs then two then four. The riddle was how two people could share a bed, a life, a padel court, and yet occupy entirely separate worlds.

And the answer, he thought as Sarah rolled away from him in her sleep, was simple: you stop walking altogether.