The Sphinx's Last Game

The corporate padel court gleamed under fluorescent lights, where the vice presidents played their Thursday matches while the rest of us watched like ghosts at a feast. I stood by the glass wall, nursing a drink I'd forgotten to taste, feeling like a zombie who hadn't been told they were already dead.

"You're wearing that hat again," Sarah said, appearing beside me. She meant my position, my role, the performance I'd been giving for three years. We'd broken up six months ago, but somehow we kept orbiting each other's wreckage.

"It pays the bills," I said.

Inside the court, Marcus—the sphinx of our department—smashed a winner past his opponent. Marcus with his riddles and his impossible expectations, his face blank as stone. He'd fired half my team last quarter and still showed up to work like nothing had changed. Some quality of ruthless stillness made everyone want to please him, like proving yourself to a god who'd never looked at you twice.

"I saw your cat this morning," Sarah said, like she was mentioning the weather. "Sitting on your windowsill. Looking for you."

My chest tightened. Cleo, the only creature who'd never pretended I was something I wasn't. "I've been working late."

"You've been disappearing." She turned to face me, and for the first time in months, I saw what I'd lost: not just a lover, but the only person who'd known me before the hat, before the game, before I'd learned to move through corporate hallways like something undead.

Marcus caught my eye through the glass. He beckoned with one finger—come play. The court door opened, and someone from HR handed me a racquet. The crowd watched.

I set the drink down. I walked to the door and kept walking, past the court, past the sphinx's puzzled expression, out into the night where a living creature waited for me to come home.

"Your cat," I called back to Sarah. "Don't let her go hungry."

She smiled, like she'd been waiting years to hear me say something real.