The Sphinx at Shortstop

The desert heat pressed against the hotel room window as David stared at the Great Sphinx through his morning coffee. Forty-two years old and divorced, he'd come to Egypt to escape the memories that waited in every corner of his Chicago apartment.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Elena said from behind him. She was twenty-eight, a travel writer he'd met at the bar last night. Young enough to still believe that running away from your problems actually worked.

"Just remembering," David said.

He was thinking about 1999, the summer his father had taken him to his first Cubs game. The smell of beer and popcorn, the crack of the bat, the way his dad had squeezed his shoulder when David caught a foul ball. That was before the cancer. Before his father stopped being able to walk to the stadium. Before David started throwing baseballs at the garage door until his knuckles bled, trying to hit something he could actually control.

"What do you see in that old stone cat anyway?" Elena asked, pouring herself coffee.

"Riddles," David said. "The sphinx asks you a question, and if you can't answer, it eats you alive."

"What's the riddle?"

David finished his coffee and set the cup down. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?" He paused. "The answer is 'man.' We crawl as babies, walk as adults, and use canes when we're old. But nobody tells you the cane feels like giving up."

They spent the day by the hotel pool. David watched Elena float on her back in the water, hair spread like dark silk around her face. She looked like a painting, like something you could stare at forever without ever really understanding.

"My dad loved baseball," David said suddenly, surprising himself. "He taught me to keep my eye on the ball. Said life moves fast, and if you're not watching, you'll miss everything that matters. He missed everything. Died before I made varsity, before my first real job, before my marriage fell apart."

Elena swam to the edge of the pool. "And now?"

"Now I'm thirty years too late and a continent away from where I started. The sphinx is still asking questions, and I still don't have any answers."

She pulled herself up until their faces were inches apart. "Maybe you're not supposed to have answers. Maybe you're just supposed to keep swinging."

That night, David dreamed his father was standing on the pitcher's mound at Wrigley Field. The sphinx crouched behind home plate, stone wings unfurled. His father wound up and threw. The ball came spinning through the heat haze, and David swung. He connected—perfectly—and the ball sailed into the desert sky, turning into a star that burned and burned until he woke up alone in the dark.

The next morning, Elena was gone. A note on the nightstand said she'd caught an early flight to Istanbul. David found himself standing again before the window, staring at the sphinx that had watched empires rise and fall, indifferent to the small heartbreaks of men.

He called his ex-wife. Just to hear her voice. Just to say he was sorry.

The desert wind stirred the sand outside, and somewhere beyond the window, a new day was beginning. David finally understood: some riddles don't have answers. Some riddles just teach you how to live with the question.