Signal Loss

The dog, Buster, had stopped barking at the cable guy three visits ago. That's how long Marcus had been coming to her house—six months of tangled coaxial and mounting sexual tension that neither of them acknowledged, not even the night her husband was working late and they stayed on the couch watching the signal bars flicker from three to four.

Now Marcus stood in her living room with his tool belt slung low, explaining something about fiber optic upgrades. She wasn't listening. She was counting the vitamin supplements on her kitchen counter—biotin for the hair she'd started losing, magnesium for the anxiety that woke her at 3 AM, vitamin D for the bone-deep exhaustion that no amount of sleep could fix. Her husband called them her expensive pee. Marcus had once called them her armor.

"They're upgrading the whole neighborhood," Marcus said, his voice rougher than usual. "Next week. I won't be coming around anymore."

The cable looped on the floor like a snake she'd forgotten to kill. Outside, an autumn leaf skittered against the window. Buster whined, sensing the shift in air pressure, the way animals always did before something broke.

"Is that what you want?" she asked, and the question hung in the room like smoke.

Marcus's hands stilled on his equipment. He had calluses from cables that bit into his palms, from wires that connected strangers to worlds they'd rather inhabit. His wife didn't know he came here. Her husband didn't know either. They were both cowards, fortified by their respective marriages and their separate lonelinesses.

"What I want," Marcus said quietly, "doesn't matter much."

Buster limped over to him, pressing his gray muzzle into Marcus's palm. The dog was dying—they all were, really, just some faster than others. She'd been giving him glucosamine supplements for months, pretending it was helping. Some vitamins were just denial in pill form.

"Next week," she repeated. The cable snaked around her ankle, tethering her to a decision she'd been making for six months without ever actually making it.

Marcus shouldered his bag. The cable light on the modem blinked green, then steady. Perfect signal. Perfect clarity. Just in time for everything to end.

"Take care of yourself," he said, and meant: I'm not coming back.

"You too," she replied, and meant: I know.

When the door clicked shut, Buster whined again. She opened the vitamin bottle and swallowed three without water, standing in the center of her living room where the cable guy had just been, where her husband would be in three hours, where she'd been slowly disappearing for years. Some signals don't come through, no matter how good the connection is.