The Cable Guy

The pool had been empty for three days, a turquoise wound in the backyard of what used to be our marriage. I sat on the edge, feet dangling in the tepid water that hadn't been filtered since David left. The palm fronds above me whispered in the October heat, like ghosts of better times.

Then the cable guy arrived.

He was younger than I expected, maybe thirty, with oil-stained fingers and eyes that had seen too many empty houses. "Ma'am," he said, and I realized I was still wearing David's robe, the silk one I'd sworn I'd burn.

"Just here for the internet," I said, not moving from the pool's edge. "It's been out since Thursday."

"Since your husband moved out," he said, and I wondered how much the neighbors told the service people in this town. Probably everything.

He worked while I watched. His hands moved with practiced efficiency over the cables, stripping wires, connecting lines that had nothing to do with David or me. The water lapped against my calves, indifferent and relentless.

"You know," he said, not looking up from his work, "my wife left me last month."

The palm fronds seemed to stop swaying. "I'm sorry."

"She said I was always disconnected," he laughed bitterly, holding up a coaxial cable like evidence. "Irony, right?"

I don't know what made me slide into the pool fully clothed. The water swallowed me, cool and shocking against my skin. When I surfaced, he was standing at the edge, cable forgotten.

"Your bill," he said, "will be higher if the equipment gets wet."

"I don't care about the bill," I said, treading water in the deep end. "I don't care about anything."

He sat down at the edge, rolled up his pant legs, and put his feet in the water. The company van idled in the driveway. Somewhere, a phone began ringing.

"My therapist says I need to feel things," I said. "Instead of just watching other people live on streaming services."

"Mine says I need to stop fixing other people's connections," he said, "and start fixing my own."

We sat like that for twenty minutes—two strangers, ankle-deep in a dead marriage's pool, while the cable hummed its invisible song of connection and the palms stood witness, and somewhere else entirely, our lives waited to begin again.