Signal Loss at the Shallows

Margot sat by the hotel pool, chlorine stinging her nose, watching her husband Marcus asleep on the lounge chair beside her. His straw hat—purchased yesterday in a moment of tourist optimism—slipped over his eyes. They'd come to Cabo for their twentieth anniversary, to reconnect, to remember why they'd chosen each other.

Instead, she'd spent three days watching him scroll through emails, his iPhone glowing like a steady accusation between them. She'd tried. God, she'd tried. She'd worn the red bikini, ordered the expensive wine, suggested couples' activities.

Now he slept, exhausted from nothing.

Her phone buzzed—a text from her sister: "Any better?" Margot typed back: "Worse." Then deleted it.

A coaxial cable snaked across the patio from the outdoor television set, and some drunk tourist had tripped over it earlier, sending sparks flying. No one had cared. The screen had flickered and died, and still people kept glancing at it, as if the black glass might miraculously sputter to life with something more interesting than the actual humans around them.

Marcus's phone buzzed. Work again. Always work.

Margot stood, her legs trembling from more than just the heat. She walked to the pool's edge, where the water lapped softly against the tiles. The blue stretched deep and inviting, but she wasn't thinking about swimming.

She picked up Marcus's iPhone. The screen litened with messages from someone named Sarah—messages that made her breath catch, made her stomach turn over in ways she hadn't felt since their first year together. But not good ways. Never good ways.

She looked at her sleeping husband. At the hat that failed to hide him from himself. At the cable that trailed uselessly toward a television that no one needed.

At the pool that promised to wash everything clean if you just slipped under its surface and stayed there.

Instead, she dropped the phone into the water. It sank quickly, a tiny technological suicide.

Marcus stirred. "Margot? What was that splash?"

"Nothing," she said, already walking toward the bar. "Just the signal dying again."