The Cable Between Us

Elena sat on the balcony of their high-rise apartment, the city sprawling beneath her like a circuit board of lights and darkness. Inside, Marcus was asleep—or pretending to be. She'd become a kind of zombie in their marriage, moving through rooms on autopilot, performing the rituals of intimacy that had long since hollowed out.

She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl around the coaxial cable that snaked along the railing, connecting them to a world of entertainment that neither of them enjoyed anymore. Three years ago, Marcus had confessed over dinner that he worked for private intelligence. Corporate spy, he'd called it, like it was something glamorous. She'd asked if he'd ever spied on *her*.

"You know I wouldn't," he'd said, and she'd believed him because she needed to.

Now she wasn't sure. Recently she'd found the vitamin bottle she kept on her nightstand—just a generic multivitamin she took every morning—moved slightly each day. Sometimes the lid was loose. Sometimes the count was off by one. It was nothing. It was everything.

Marcus had started asking questions about her work at the architectural firm. Not the usual how-was-your-day questions, but specifics about clients, about building plans, about the new government contract her team was designing. Elena had found herself editing her answers, withholding details, and the realization had hit her like cold water: she didn't trust him anymore.

She stubbed out her cigarette and went inside. Marcus was sitting up in bed, the blue light of his phone illuminating his face.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, moving toward the dresser. She opened the vitamin bottle and shook two pills into her palm. She'd started taking two instead of one, a small rebellion against whoever was counting. "Just thinking."

"About what?"

She looked at him—at this man she'd loved, at this stranger in their bed. At the cable that still ran behind the wall, connecting them to everything and nothing.

"About how much I'd give," she said, "to feel something real again."

Marcus's phone screen went dark. In the reflection of the window, she saw his face change—saw the professional mask slip into place, the spy assessing his target. And she understood with sudden, terrible clarity that she was no longer his wife. She was a job.