The Sphinx by Third Base

The rain started in the seventh inning, turning the dirt diamond into a mud slick. I sat there with my iPhone lighting up with messages I couldn't bring myself to answer.

Marcus had been that kind of friend—a sphinx in cutoff jeans and a faded Red Sox cap, his riddles not in words but in silences, in the way he'd disappear for weeks then show up at my door with cheap beer and baseball tickets like nothing had changed. We'd come here every summer since college, watching other men live out dreams we'd both quietly abandoned.

The water pooled around my sneakers now, cold and relentless. I thought about last season, when he'd caught a foul ball barehanded and given it to a crying kid three rows down. That was the thing about him—he carried his pain like a secret, letting it surface only in these small, graceless moments of generosity.

My iPhone buzzed again. His sister's name on the screen. I'd been avoiding her calls since the funeral.

The baseball players scattered for cover as the sky darkened. A grounds crew rushed onto the field with that giant tarp they always dragged out like a shroud. I remembered Marcus once telling me he loved rain delays—the way time stopped, how the crowd held its collective breath, the world shrinking down to just the sound of water against canvas and the person beside you.

"Like the universe gives us permission to just sit with our ghosts," he'd said, and I'd laughed because it sounded so pretentious coming from a guy who worked in a warehouse.

Now I sat alone in the emptying stadium, his ghost beside me in the empty seat, and finally understood what he'd meant. The sphinx had been asking me all along: *What will you do with the time you're given?*

I answered my phone.