Cable to Nowhere

The fiber optic cable lay coiled on the balcony like a black snake, dormant and waiting. Elena hadn't moved it in three weeks.

"You're being a bull in a china shop," David said from the doorway, not coming closer. "You think storming out fixes anything?"

She didn't turn from the view of the swimming pool below, where an elderly woman did her morning laps with grim determination. The water was that impossible blue that only existed in chlorined places—unnatural, artificial, the way their marriage had become for years.

"I'm not storming," she said quietly. "I'm finally seeing things clearly."

Their dog, Buster, a golden retriever who'd outlived his projected lifespan by two years, lay at her feet. He thumped his tail once, a gesture of exhausted optimism. David had wanted to put him down last winter when the hip dysplasia got bad. Elena had fought him. Now Buster was the only thing still tethering her to this apartment.

"The technician comes tomorrow," David said. "To install the cable. You signed the contract."

"I know."

"So you're staying."

She turned then. At thirty-five, she looked in the mirror and saw her mother's tired eyes staring back. The same eyes that had watched her father pack his boxes when she was twelve. History didn't repeat itself, but it certainly knew how to echo.

"The cable installation is for you," she said. "So you can watch your games, work from home, keep living this half-life where we pretend everything's fine because the mortgage is manageable and the dog needs walking."

David flinched. "What do you want from me?"

"I wanted you to swim with me last summer," she said. "When I asked you to learn. You said you were too busy. You're always too busy—for anything that's real."

Below, the swimming woman finished her laps and pulled herself from the water, her movements heavy with age but purposeful. Alive.

"Buster deserves better than watching us die slowly together," Elena said, and she meant herself and David, though she could have meant the dog and both of them.

The cable would be installed tomorrow. The technician would punch holes in walls they'd painted together, thread wires through spaces they'd built. But Elena would be gone by then, off to somewhere she could finally learn how to swim.