Channels We Lost
The motel room smelled of chlorine and stale desire. Elena sat on the edge of the bed, her palm pressed against the cool windowpane, watching the empty pool below. Blue water shimmered under flickering lights, but no one swam. It was October in Palm Springs, off-season, the kind of place people came to disappear or to be found.
On the television, a baseball game played silently—the ninth inning, a man on third, the championship hanging by a thread. But Elena had stopped watching innings ago. She was waiting for a cable guy who'd said he'd come between noon and five. It was now seven.
Her phone buzzed. Marcus again.
*Did you sign the papers?*
She didn't answer. Instead, she walked outside, needing air. The pool gate creaked as she pushed it open. A black cat watched her from atop a lounge chair, its eyes reflecting the pool's underwater lights.
"You waiting for someone too?" she whispered.
The cat didn't move.
Elena thought about the game on TV—how the batter had stood at the plate, the whole stadium holding its breath, every pitch a possibility. That's what she'd been doing for fifteen years of marriage: standing in the batter's box, watchingMarcus throw curveballs she couldn't hit, swinging at air, taking strikes she never saw coming.
Her palm still held the unsigned papers. She looked at them now, the moonlight catching the lawyer's crisp type.
The cat stood, stretched, then walked to her and rubbed its head against her ankle. A simple gesture. Uncomplicated affection.
"Yeah," she said, tears finally coming. "Me too."
Back in the room, the cable guy had finally arrived—a young man with grease-stained fingers who said the whole building's system was down, something about a severed line. He'd have to come back tomorrow.
"Tomorrow," she repeated, testing the word. It felt like a beginning.
She packed her bag, left the papers unsigned on the nightstand, and checked out. The cat watched from the lobby window as she drove away, and somewhere far away, a baseball game ended, someone finally winning.