The Riddle of Section 204

The baseball sailed through the humid June air, a white comet disappearing into the stadium lights. Matt watched its trajectory with the practiced eye of someone who'd spent three decades believing that if he could just calculate the right angles, he could predict where everything would land.

"You ever notice how your hair's the same color as that sphinx's riddle?"

Matt turned. The woman beside him was maybe thirty-five, with mascara smudged beneath one eye like she'd been crying, or maybe just sweating in the heat. She gestured toward the field, where the mascot — some corporate bull in a jersey — was dancing awkwardly near the dugout.

"Sorry?"

"The sphinx," she said. "The riddle. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. Your hair's going gray at the temples. Same color as old photographs of riddles we haven't figured out yet."

Matt laughed, surprised. He'd come to the game alone, Sarah's key still burning a hole in his pocket three weeks after she'd left. Their daughter's college fund was争论 into lawyers' fees now. That was the thing about being bull-headed — you thought you were charging toward something, but mostly you were just trampling what mattered underhoof.

"I'm Elena," the woman said.

"Matt."

"My dad took me to games when I was little," she said. "Before he got sick and stopped recognizing me. That bull down there — the way it lumbers around like it doesn't know its own strength. That was him. That's all of us, really."

The crowd roared. Someone hit a home run.

"The answer's 'man,'" Elena said suddenly. "The sphinx's riddle. We crawl, we walk, we lean on canes. But the trick part nobody mentions — the part that makes it tragic — is that by the time you figure out the answer, you're already on the third leg."

She stood up, gathering her purse.

"Nice meeting you, Matt."

He watched her walk up the aisle, her dark hair swaying, and realized with a hollow ache that he should have asked for her number. But he just sat there, rooted in Section 204, as the bull mascot danced and the sphinx's riddle echoed in the spaces between his heartbeats.

Some endings, he thought, you write yourself. The rest just happen to you.