The Cord That Connected Us

The cable guy knocked at 8 AM. Sarah was already gone—left sometime between the night I forgot to ask about her day and the morning I woke to find her side of the bed cold, unpressed, like a hotel room after checkout.

"Disconnecting everything," the technician said, his back to me as he worked at the wall jack. The coaxial cable dangled like a severed artery.

On the kitchen counter, her daily vitamin regimen remained lined up: D3 for mood, B-complex for energy, iron because she'd given up meat for three weeks that one time. I'd meant to throw them out. Instead, each morning I pretended they were still hers, that this was still a routine we shared, that she'd walk through the door any moment complaining about her boss, the traffic, the existential dread of being thirty-three and feeling like life was happening to someone else.

The orange tree in the backyard had dropped its first fruit of the season. Perfect spheres of warning color against the gray concrete. Sarah had planted it—the "symbol of our growing life together," she'd said when the sapling arrived. Now it mocked me. I watched from the sliding glass door as our dog, Buster, investigated one of the fallen oranges, sniffing it with the mild curiosity of a creature who'd lost his favorite person but still had his bowl, his bed, the daily miracle of food appearing from nowhere.

"You know," the cable guy said, turning to find me standing there in my boxers, unshaven, holding Sarah's vitamin bottle like it was a grenade, "women usually take the furniture, not leave it."

I looked at him—really looked—at the wedding ring tan line on his finger, the exhaustion around his eyes, the way his shoulders sagged forward like he carried everyone's disconnections.

"She left the dog," I said.

He nodded, like this explained everything, and maybe it did.

"Forty a month for basic," he said, tearing off the receipt. "In case you change your mind."

I paid him. He left. The house fell silent except for Buster's claws on the tile, the periodic thump of another orange hitting concrete, and my own breathing, which seemed suddenly too loud, too practiced, too alone.

I opened the vitamin bottle. The pills rattled like hard rain. I took one—D3, for mood—and waited for it to work.