The Cable at the Bottom of the Pool

The co-axial cable lay coiled at the bottom of the swimming pool like a copper snake, its black sheen rippling in the chlorine-blue water. Elena stood at the edge, vitamin D tablet dissolving on her tongue — the kind you take when you've forgotten what actual sunlight feels like.

"You cut the cord," Mark said from the lounge chair, padel racquet resting against his knee like a weapon he'd forgotten how to use. "Literally. That was three hundred dollars of subscription services you just drowned."

"I needed to hear myself think."

"You hate thinking. That's why you watched so much TV."

Her wet hair plastered against her skull like dark seaweed. At forty-two, she'd stopped caring about the silver threads weaving through the brown. Mark noticed everything, noticed nothing. He'd been playing padel four nights a week since the miscarriage, since the promotion that made him someone else's problem instead of hers. His hair was still thick, still boyish. Still unfair.

"I'm canceling the vitamin subscription too," she said, diving in.

The water swallowed her. She swam to the bottom, fingers grazing the cable. It was warmer than she expected, carrying the ghost-heat of whatever it had once transmitted — news, weather, crying politicians, people pretending to have answers. She'd met him at a cable company Christmas party fifteen years ago. He'd made a joke about bandwidth that made her laugh until her ribs hurt.

Now he was watching her surface, shake water from her eyes like a dog, like someone learning to be okay with being alone.

"You know," he said, "they charge a fee for early cancellation."

"I already paid it," she said, touching the wet strands of hair clinging to her neck. "The day I married you."

He didn't answer. He just picked up his padel racquet, swinging at invisible balls. Elena swam toward the deep end, toward where the cable lay waiting, heavy and silent and finally disconnected. The chlorine burned her eyes in a way that felt almost like clarity.