Cable Management

The orange sat on my desk like a small, stubborn sun. I peeled it slowly, letting the citrus spray mist into the stagnant office air. Elena had left three days ago, taking with her the blue ceramic mug I'd bought in Venice, the good towels, and somehow, inexplicably, my ability to sleep past 4 AM.

I finished the orange and wiped my sticky fingers on my pants — the same pants I'd worn to work yesterday, and the day before. Dave from accounting had given me a look in the breakroom. The kind of look that says I see you unraveling, and I'm quietly grateful it's not me.

"You okay, man?"

"Fine. Just organizing the cable spaghetti under my desk." It wasn't a complete lie. There was something comforting about the sharp plastic edges, the way they obeyed when I applied zip ties with practiced precision. cables behaved. cables stayed where you put them. cables didn't wake you up at 3 AM to say they'd met someone who "really gets" their photography hobby.

The storm outside had been building all afternoon. Lightning cracked the sky open, and for a second, the entire office went white. My phone buzzed. Elena's name. I stared at her contact photo — the two of us on that trip to New Orleans, me in that ridiculous straw hat she'd made me buy, her hand in mine, both of us drunk on hurricanes and the terrifying certainty that we'd last forever.

I opened my palm and looked at the lines there. The same hand that had held hers. The same hand that now smoothed cable ties into neat, obedient bundles, trying to impose order on a world that kept coming apart at the seams.

Another flash of lightning. The fluorescent lights flickered and died. The office went dark. Around me, thirty people groaned in unison. Computers powered down. The hum of servers stopped.

"Great," someone said. "Go home early, I guess."

I sat there in the darkness, under my desk, surrounded by the cables I'd just spent three hours arranging into something resembling sense. And for the first time since Elena left, I laughed. Not the polite chuckle I gave Dave, or the hollow sound I made when people asked how I was holding up. This was something uglier and more honest.

The cables were still tangled. The darkness made no difference. Some things can't be organized away.

I packed up my bag. I'd buy a new orange tomorrow. Eventually, I'd even wash my pants. Not today, but eventually.