The Riddle We Never Solved

The goldfish circled his bowl, three seconds of memory looping into infinity, while Marcus poured us both generous measures of whiskey. 'Janet left me,' he said, the words hanging in the air like dust motes in afternoon light.

I'd known Marcus since we were twelve, since our Little League baseball days when failure meant striking out and tomorrow was always another game. But at forty-seven, tomorrow felt increasingly like a promise we'd made to ourselves and broken.

'She said I'm like that sphinx we saw in Egypt,' Marcus continued, swirling his drink. 'Mysterious on the outside, hollow on the inside.'

'She always did read too much into things,' I said, but the truth was, Marcus had been growing distant for years. Our weekly padel matches had become less about friendship and more about something to fill the hours between work and sleep.

He'd lost weight recently. His racket, usually an extension of his arm, had seemed heavy in his hands during our match yesterday. I'd beaten him 6-0, 6-1, and he'd just smiled that tired smile that never reached his eyes anymore.

'Remember when we thought life would be like baseball?' Marcus asked suddenly. 'Clear rules. Fair balls and fouls. You keep swinging, eventually you connect.' He gestured to the goldfish, who'd forgotten his swim around the plastic castle and was now investigating it with fresh wonder. 'Maybe he's the lucky one. No past. No future. Just now, over and over.'

The padel court. The sphinx's riddle. The baseball diamond. All games with rules we'd learned too late. I looked at my friend, really looked at him, and saw for the first time the sphinx he'd become—impenetrable, silent, guarding secrets he'd never tell.

'Tomorrow,' I said. 'Padel. Same time.' It was both a question and a plea.

Marcus nodded, his first genuine movement in months. 'Tomorrow.'

The goldfish swam another circle, beginning again, and I wondered if we were any different, just with longer memories and more complicated ways to forget ourselves.