Cable to Nowhere

Marco installed cable for a living. Fiber optics, coaxial, the invisible veins that pumped entertainment into suburban homes. He'd been doing it for seventeen years, since the accident. Since the water. Since her.

At 3 PM on Tuesdays, he played padel with Javier, a fifty-year-old accountant who cheated on his wife with the kind of sloppiness that Marco found almost admirable in its transparency. The court smelled of rubber and ozone, a harsh contrast to the chlorine that still haunted his dreams.

"You're distracted today," Javier said, slamming the ball against the glass wall.

Marco didn't answer. He'd connected cable to the Stevens' house that morning — the Stevens whose daughter had been the backstroke champion, the girl who'd replaced her in the lane, in the scholarship, in everything that might have been.

"She drowned, you know," Mrs. Stevens had said while he worked. "Just last year. In a lake. She wasn't even swimming."

The ball hit Marco's racket and flew into the net.

"Hey, you okay?" Javier asked.

Marco walked to the edge of the court. Beyond the glass wall, the city sprawled like a cancer, every building connected by cables he'd strung himself. He thought of how she'd died not in competition, but years later in a bathtub. The coroner said it was an accident. Marco knew better.

"I need to go swimming," he said suddenly.

"What?" Javier looked at his watch. "It's November."

Marco laughed, a sound like tearing metal. "Not here. I'm going back. To the facility where I trained. They closed it down last year."

He'd drive there tonight. Stand in the empty pool where she'd first told him she was leaving the sport. Where they'd kissed for the first time, tasting of chlorine and teenage desperation. Where she'd taught him that some things, once you start swimming away from them, you can never turn back.

"Your serve," Marco said, picking up the ball.

But he was already gone — already underwater, already holding his breath, already seventeen years in the drowning.