The Sphinx of Center Field

The cat had been dead three months when Marcus finally agreed to the blind date. His sister insisted. 'You're walking around like a zombie, Marcus. It's time.'

He sat across from Sarah at a sports bar, surrounded by televisions broadcasting games he'd stopped caring about years ago. Baseball had been his father's religion—Sunday afternoons, radio commentary, the crack of the bat meaningful somehow. Now it was just noise.

'I'm a riddle,' Sarah said, smiling over her whiskey. She had eyes like his mother's, knowing and sad. 'A sphinx in business casual. Solve me and win a prize.'

Marcus almost laughed. He was thirty-eight, recently divorced, emotionally bankrupt, and now being asked to play games. The bartender switched channels. A player hit a home run; the crowd roared. Marcus remembered his father at sixty, Alzheimer's turning his mind into something ancient and enigmatic, asking questions that had no answers. Who am I? Where did the years go?

'What do you want?' Marcus asked, not unkindly.

'To remember what it feels like to want something,' she said.

He thought about the cat—Barnaby—who'd slept on his chest through his marriage's slow decay, who'd purred through arguments and silences, who'd been the only living thing to witness Marcus's transformation from hopeful husband to something hollowed-out and performative. The cat's death had hit him harder than the divorce papers.

'I used to love baseball,' Marcus said. 'The way a curve ball breaks. The way the crowd holds its breath. But now? It's just people running in circles.'

Sarah nodded. 'Life feels like that sometimes.' She signaled for another round. 'My ex-husband collected antiquities. Actual things. We had a miniature sphinx in our foyer. Guests would ask what it symbolized. Truth? He just liked the aesthetic.'

'Truth is overrated,' Marcus said.

'Is it?'

He looked at her—really looked. She wasn't beautiful, but she was present. The zombie in him stirred.

'My father once told me baseball is about failure,' Marcus said. 'You fail seven times out of ten and you're a hero.'

'That's the most depressing inspirational story I've ever heard.'

'I'm not trying to inspire you.' He checked his watch, then didn't leave. 'I'm trying to remember something.'