The Sphinx on Court 3

Elena's legs burned as she ran across the padel court, her rubber sole squeaking against the artificial turf. At 42, she'd taken up the sport three months ago—something, anything, to get her out of the house before Mark woke up and asked where she'd been.

"You're distracted," said Daniel, her padel partner, smashing the ball past her.

She'd met Daniel at the club. He was 38, recently divorced, and possessed what she'd come to think of as sphinx-like qualities—he asked questions that felt like riddles, waited silently for answers she didn't know she was carrying.

"Your serve," Elena said, bending to retrieve the ball.

"Who were you with last night?" Daniel asked, not looking at her.

The question hung in the humid air between points. Elena felt something crack inside her—maybe the same thing that had cracked eight months ago when she'd started sleeping with her coworker, or six months ago when she'd started lying to Mark about "late meetings," or four months ago when she'd realized she didn't care if she got caught.

She'd become a zombie, she realized. Not the flesh-eating kind from movies, but something worse: the walking dead version of herself that went through motions, that smiled at dinner conversations, that kissed her husband goodnight while her phone lit up with messages from another man.

"I'm tired of running," Elena said, and she wasn't talking about the game.

Daniel moved closer to the net. "Then stop."

"What if it's too late?"

"That's the thing about sphinxes," he said. "The riddles only seem impossible until you say the answer out loud."

Elena looked at him—at this near-stranger who'd somehow become the person who saw her clearly. She thought of Mark at home, probably awake now, maybe making coffee. She thought of Jonathan at work, who'd text her in twenty minutes asking to meet for lunch. She thought about how she'd been running for eight months and hadn't moved at all.

"I'm going to tell him," she said.

"Good," said Daniel, tossing her the ball. "Now serve."