The Fox at the End of the Line

The coaxial cable lay across her living room floor like a dead snake, a relic from the technician's visit three days ago. Elena hadn't bothered to move it. Nothing worked anymore—not the internet, not her relationship with Marcus, certainly not the spy camera she'd foolishly installed last year to catch him cheating.

She'd caught something worse than infidelity: his ordinariness. His gray, suffocating lack of secrets.

Now Marcus was gone, the camera was disconnected, and Elena sat on her balcony with a bottle of wine she'd stolen from his departure box. The cable snaked inside, useless. Tomorrow, the Comcast man would return. Everything was provisional.

A rustle in the ravine below her apartment drew her attention. A fox emerged from the sumac, its coat the color of burnt orange, its eyes two fixed stars. It carried something in its mouth—a dead rat, maybe, or something soft and warm.

Elena watched it, and it watched her back across the thirty feet of darkness separating civilization from wildness. She felt seen. Observed. The fox was the best spy she'd ever known.

"What are you looking at?" she whispered.

The fox tilted its head. Then it dropped its prize and began to eat.

Elena remembered the day she'd accessed Marcus's laptop, the day she'd become exactly what she feared. She'd found nothing suspicious. Just his browsing history, his earnest searches for engagement rings, his pathetic stash of romantic comedies. The spy in her had destroyed them both. Or maybe it was the cable guy who'd asked if she was happy, and she'd laughed, and the laugh had contained an answer she couldn't take back.

The fox finished its meal and looked up again, jaws stained dark. Then it turned and vanished into the brush.

Elena went inside and coiled the cable into a perfect loop. She placed it on the empty side of the bed, where Marcus used to sleep.

In the morning, she would call and cancel the service. She didn't need to be connected anymore.