The Riddle at Sunset

The spinach was stuck between Marcus's front teeth, a tiny green flag of surrender he couldn't feel but everyone else could see. He leaned across the rooftop table, passionate about something—mergers, projections, the future—as palm trees swayed behind him in the warm LA twilight, their fronds tracing shadows across Elena's unreadable face.

She had always been sphinx-like in her silences, those dark eyes giving nothing away. It was what had drawn him to her three years ago at that Dodgers game, when she'd caught his stare during the seventh-inning stretch and held it, inscrutable as stone, while the crowd roared around them. He'd bought her a beer, she'd let him. That was how it began.

"You're not listening," he said now, and she finally spoke.

"I'm trying to decide if I should tell you about the spinach or let you keep talking."

The heat rose up his neck. She smiled, just slightly—the first crack in the sphinx's armor all evening. Her palm rested on the table between them, and he found himself tracing the life line with his thumb, something she'd taught him to do on that first date, when they'd sat on her balcony and drunk wine until dawn, trading stories like baseball cards.

"Elena, what's happening?"

"I read palms at my sister's bachelorette party," she said. "Six months ago. Some corporate guy, cute, miserable. I saw something in his hands—divorce, loneliness. And then I looked closer and realized: the lines were just like yours."

The spinach between his teeth suddenly felt enormous. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I keep thinking about that baseball game. How you caught that foul ball and gave it to me like it was something precious. And now we're here, and you have spinach in your teeth, and I can't decide if that's charming or if it's everything."

The sphinx had spoken, but the riddle only deepened. Marcus laughed—really laughed—for the first time in months. He reached for her hand across the table, palm against palm, and somewhere in the distance, the Dodger Stadium lights flickered on like distant stars.