Signal Loss
Arthur knelt behind the server rack, his knees cracking like dry twigs. At forty-seven, he spent his days crawling under desks, untangling cables that would just tangle again.
His father's old fedora sat in his bag, retrieved from the donation box with sudden possessiveness. Dad had worn it the day he walked out—Arthur at ten, his mother weeping at the kitchen table while spinach boiled forgotten on the stove, filling the apartment with bitter steam.
His phone buzzed.
A text from Elena in Marketing: "Conference room still needs fixing. Alone until 3. :)"
Arthur stared at it.
The smiley face felt like a dare.
They'd been sleeping together for three months. Not love—Arthur wasn't sure he believed in love anymore—but something.
Her husband worked in Accounting.
Clara had texted hours ago: "Pick up spinach. We're doing salad tonight. We need to talk."
The phrase that ends marriages.
Arthur and Clara hadn't really talked in years. They exchanged information about schedules and groceries, but conversation died around year twelve, when he stopped noticing her dresses and she stopped asking about his day.
Now there was just this: spinach, and silence, and Elena's smiley faces.
Elena wanted more. She'd started leaving markers in his bag—lipstick, a hair tie, her scent.
Arthur had found Clara doing the same once, years ago. She'd never confronted him. She'd just stopped wearing perfume altogether.
Probably she noticed Elena too. Clara noticed everything. That was the problem.
Arthur stood up, knees aching.
He should fix the conference room.
He should pick up spinach.
He should have the conversation that would end with one of them in a hotel room and the other alone, with spinach rotting in the crisper drawer.
Instead he pulled on his father's hat.
The felt was stale.
He looked like his father.
He felt like him too.
Arthur walked past the conference room, past Elena's expectant gaze through the glass wall, and kept walking.
Out the building doors into the grey afternoon.
He didn't go to the grocery store.
He didn't go home.
He just walked until his phone died, until the hat grew heavy, until the city blurred and all the cables—marriage and affair and job and obligation—finally, finally snapped.