Cut Cable

Marcus stood in the center of his living room, surrounded by the detritus of a decade of marriage. The cardboard boxes multiplied like cancer cells. In his hand, the coaxial cable hung limp—a black umbilical cord that had fed them distraction for ten thousand evenings.

She'd left three weeks ago. No note, just her absence and the lingering scent of her perfume on pillows he refused to wash. "I'm running," she'd said in the hallway that day, not moving at all. "I've been running in place with you for twelve years, and I realized I don't know how to stop."

The divorce papers arrived yesterday. He'd signed them without reading, his handwriting unrecognizable—shaky, foreign, belonging to a stranger who lived in his skin.

Now this: the cable guy was coming in twenty minutes to disconnect their service. The finality of it made him want to vomit. Not the money, not the loss of premium channels, but what the cable represented: nights curled together watching bad movies, the blue light flickering across her face as she laughed at something terrible, her head heavy on his shoulder, the terrible intimacy of sharing attention spans, pointed in the same direction for hours.

Marcus walked to the kitchen. An orange sat on the counter, growing soft in the bowl she'd bought at that farmers' market in Santa Fe. He picked it up, dug his thumbnail into the peel, and the scent exploded—citrus and memory simultaneously. They'd argued that weekend. Something about money, or careers, or the fundamental incompatibility of their dreams. But he remembered her biting into an orange later, juice running down her chin, and thinking: I could love this woman forever.

The doorbell rang.

He set down the orange, wiped his sticky hands on his jeans. The cable guy waited on the porch, clipboard ready, and Marcus realized: this was it. The last transaction. The final service call. After this, there would be no shared anything. No Netflix password to remember. No internet bill with both names. No home.

He opened the door. "Come in," Marcus said. "It's all yours to take."