The Cable at the Bottom of the Pool

The television flickered and died, plunging the motel room into sudden darkness. Maria stared at the blank screen, the severed cable lying limp beside it like something strangled. She'd pulled it hard—too hard—when Richard's voice had come through, tinny and distant, explaining why he wouldn't be coming after all.

She walked outside to the pool. The water shimmered in the moonlight, an artificial oasis surrounded by chain-link fence. Three weeks ago, they'd been supposed to come here together. Three weeks ago, he'd called her his 'bull'—his term for someone who charges forward, stubborn and relentless. He'd said it like it was a compliment. Now it felt like an accusation.

The pool's surface reflected nothing of her. At forty-three, with a mortgage she couldn't afford and a career that had stalled somewhere between 'promising' and 'adequate,' she wasn't sure who she was anymore. The Maria who charged forward seemed to have dissolved somewhere between his phone calls and her silence.

She stepped closer to the water's edge. The smell of chlorine mixed with something sweeter—honeysuckle from the vine strangling the fence. In the distance, she could hear the drone of the highway, people going places, arriving, departing. Living lives that made sense.

'You're overthinking,' Richard would say. 'That's your problem.'

But perhaps some problems deserved overthinking. Perhaps the cable hadn't been cut by accident. Perhaps she was meant to be here, in this silence, figuring out whether the next step was forward or back—or whether standing still was its own kind of courage.

The pool water rippled in the wind. Somewhere in the darkness, something moved. A real bull, escaped from some nearby ranch? No, just a dog, prowling through the shadows. Life went on, indifferent and persistent.

Maria returned to her room and sat on the edge of the bed. In the morning, she would call the cable company. She would check out of this motel. She would drive back to a life that felt borrowed but was somehow hers. For tonight, she would sit in the quiet and listen to what it had to say.