The Riddle of Left Field

Arthur stood in left field, his baseball glove dangling from his hand like a dead thing. Thirty-two years old and already a zombie — that's what Sarah had called him during their final fight, her voice sharp with the accusation that he'd given up on everything. Including them.

The game droned on. Some corporate league, cathartic drama for men in ties who pretended they were still boys. Arthur caught the ball when it came his way, threw it back, felt nothing.

Then he saw her standing by the backstop, impossible and ethereal: a woman in an orange sundress, watching him like he was the sphinx and she'd come to demand his riddle. Not Sarah. Someone else entirely.

Her name was Lena. She worked in data entry, third floor. They'd never spoken.

"You play like a man who's forgotten something important," she said later, as they sat by the goldfish pond in the park behind the office. The fish swam in endless circles, orange flashes in murky water.

"Maybe I have."

"My mother used to say goldfish have three-second memories. Keeps them from getting bored. Keeps them from getting sad." She smiled, and Arthur felt his zombie heart stutter awake. "I think that's what we do, too. We forget things on purpose. Call it moving on. Call it being practical. But really, we're just fish swimming in circles."

"What's the alternative?"

"Remember," she said. "Everything. Even when it hurts. Especially then."

The sun set orange behind the skyline. Arthur thought about Sarah, about the way she'd smelled like rain, about the last baseball game he'd played with his father before the cancer took him. About all the things he'd swum past and forgotten.

Lena's hand found his in the dusk.

"I'm tired of circles," Arthur said.

"Then let's swim somewhere new," she answered, and something in her eyes said she understood the riddle after all: that love was the only thing worth remembering, even when it broke you.

The goldfish flashed beneath the surface, three seconds of perfect memory, over and over again. Arthur squeezed Lena's hand and thought, maybe this time, he wouldn't forget.