Drowning in Signal

The pool at the Oakwood Suites had gone emerald with neglect—exactly the kind of place Marcus specialized in rehabilitating. He'd been subletting his apartment to cover alimony payments, living out of a suitcase that smelled of chlorine and tactical regret. The morning sun fractured across the water's surface, a million fractured promises he couldn't keep.

His iPhone buzzed against the pool tile—Sarah's lawyer again. The vibration sent a ripple through his morning vitamins, scattered like pharmaceutical confetti beside his towel. Vitamin D for the seasonal depression he refused to acknowledge. B-complex for energy that never came. Magnesium for sleep that wouldn't take.

"You're not really living," she'd told him, the night she left. "You're just maintaining biological function."

He'd almost told her about the cable then—how he'd been secretly siphoning the hotel's premium internet for months, running a coaxial line through the ventilation shaft from the conference room to his sublet. Two hundred channels of digital escapism he couldn't afford. Instead he'd said nothing, which was exactly the problem.

Now he slipped into the water, fully clothed. The hotel manager would have his head if she caught him—employees weren't supposed to swim during shifts—but Marcus was past caring. The pool swallowed him whole, silence rushing in where her voice used to be. His phone continued to vibrate on the concrete, an electronic heartbeat he'd learned to ignore.

Underwater, he could pretend the cable wasn't coiled in his duffel bag like a venomous snake. Could pretend the vitamins weren't just chemistry's attempt to manufacture hope. Could pretend he wasn't treading water in the most literal sense, in a city that had already moved on.

When he finally surfaced, gasping, the phone had stopped. A notification glowed across the screen: *Payment declined.*

Marcus laughed until he coughed, the sound bouncing off the pool's neglected tiles. He kicked toward the shallow end, where his life waited in the form of wet clothes and unpaid bills. The vitamins would still be there. The cable would still need returning. The iPhone would eventually demand charging.

But for now, in the space between breath and water, he was almost weightless.