Coaxial

The hotel room's coaxial cable dangled loose from the wall like a severed artery. David hadn't noticed. He was already downstairs at the padel courts, playing sets with strangers while the Mexican sun baked everything into submission.

Mara pressed her palm against the window, feeling the heat radiate through the glass. Below, the Pacific stretched endless and indifferent. She'd come here hoping the ocean would repair what ten years of marriage had slowly eroded—the dinners spent staring at phones instead of each other, the conversations that ended before they began, the way David's touch had become perfunctory, like something on a checklist.

On the nightstand, an orange sat untouched. She'd bought it at the market yesterday, imagining they'd share it, laughing over sticky fingers. Instead, David had declined with a vague headache and ordered room service alone.

The cable dangling from the wall—it felt like metaphor overkill. She considered calling the front desk, then stopped. What would she say? That the television not working was somehow the final straw? That she needed distraction because the alternative was sitting with her own thoughts?

She walked to the mini-bar and poured water into a plastic cup. Her hands were steady now, but earlier, watching David laugh at something one of the padel partners said—a laugh she hadn't heard directed at her in months—she'd shaken so hard she'd spilled coffee on her white dress.

The dress hung in the closet now, stained like a bruise.

Outside, distant voices carried up from the courts. David was winning. He always won—at games, at arguments, at being the one who stayed calm while she dissolved.

Mara finished the water and set the cup down. The cable still swung gently in the air conditioning's draft. She could reconnect it. She could pack her bags. She could go down to the courts and demand they talk, really talk, not about whose turn it was to order room service or what time their flight left tomorrow.

Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed and watched the palm fronds sway against a sky turning violently orange with sunset. She had three more days here. Three more days of pretending this vacation was about saving anything.

The cable kept swinging. Mara didn't reach for it. She just watched it move, back and forth, like a pendulum counting down something she already knew had ended.