Cable to Nowhere

The hotel bar in Sharm el-Sheikh was empty except for me, the bartender, and the silence between my wife and me. She'd spent the day swimming in the Red Sea while I'd spent it in a windowless conference room, listening to men in Italian suits discuss the new trans-Mediterranean fiber optic cable project that would supposedly revolutionize telecommunications in North Africa.

"You're doing it again," Elena said, not looking at me. Her fingers traced the lines in her palm—she'd visited a fortune teller in the market earlier. "That thing where you're physically here but your mind is still underwater, literally."

"It's a three-billion-dollar project, El. If we pull this off, I make partner. Finally."

"And then what? You disappear into another hotel bar in another country where you can see the Sphinx from your window but never actually visit it?"

She had a point. Tomorrow I'd fly back to Rome, and she'd extend her stay alone. We'd been drifting apart for months, maybe years. I'd been so focused on proving myself to the senior partners that I'd forgotten what it felt like to be something other than ambitious.

"The fortune teller said I'm at a crossroads," Elena continued, swirling her gin and tonic. "She said I'm like a fox—clever, adaptable, but prone to digging holes and getting trapped in them. That I need to stop waiting and choose."

"Choose what?"

"Whether to keep loving someone who's never really present."

Outside, the wind rustled the palm trees along the promenade. I reached across the table and took her hand. Her palm was soft against mine. For the first time in months, I didn't think about bandwidth capacities or latency rates or the goddamn cable.

"Cancel my flight," I said. "We're going to Luxor. We're going to see the Sphinx properly. Together."

Elena's expression didn't change, but her fingers tightened around mine. "You're serious?"

"I'm tired of swimming in the wrong direction."

She smiled—really smiled—for the first time since we'd arrived. The bartender poured us another round, and for the first time in years, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.