The Last Cable

The technician was late, which felt appropriate. Elena had always said I was too patient—a bull in waiting, she called it, horns lowered but never charging. Today, with the apartment hollowed out around me, she might have been right about the waiting part.

"Cable's disconnected," the technician said, kneeling beside the wall where our TV used to be. He was young, with that ridiculous floppy hair every stylist seemed to push these days. "You want me to run a new line or what?"

I rubbed my temples. "Just disconnect it completely."

He looked up, surprised. "You sure? That's the whole package. Internet too."

"I'm sure."

Elena had taken the furniture yesterday. What remained were the things neither of us wanted to claim: the damaged padel racket from our ill-fated vacation in Marbella, the hideous floral armchair her mother had given us, my collection of hats she'd pretended to find charming. I caught sight of myself in the hallway mirror—hat hair, dark circles, the slack expression of a man who'd been hollowed out by degrees.

"Your wife?" the technician asked, gesturing toward the empty living room.

"Ex-wife as of Tuesday."

"Sorry, man. That's rough."

"It's fine."

It wasn't fine. Nothing was fine. But I'd been bull-headed about the divorce, certain that freedom would taste like victory. Instead, it tasted like takeout Thai and silence.

The technician stood, dusting off his knees. "All done. You're all cut off."

He meant the cable, but something else severed too—some last tether to the life where I was someone's husband, where someone noticed if I came home, where silence meant peace instead of absence.

After he left, I sat on the floor and stared at the blank wall where the television had been. Outside, the city hummed with Saturday noise. I thought about calling Elena, but what would I say? That I missed her? That I was wrong? That the apartment felt like a mouth without teeth?

Instead, I picked up the damaged padel racket from the corner and swung it through the air, once, twice. Elena had always been the better player—light on her feet, laughing when she missed, radiant when she scored. I played like I lived: grim, determined, entirely too serious.

I set down the racket and walked to the closet, where my hats hung in a row. I chose the fedora I'd worn the night we met—stupid, really, wearing a hat like that to a dive bar. Elena had mocked me mercilessly.

"You look like a detective from a 1940s noir," she'd said, grinning.

"And you're the dame who's going to break my heart."

She had. And I had broken hers, in slower, quieter ways—by being there but never present, by loving the idea of her more than the reality of us, by choosing my job and my pride and my stupid bull-headed convictions over connection every single time.

I put on the hat and looked in the mirror again. The man staring back looked ready for something new, something terrible and wonderful and unknown.

The cable was gone. The apartment was empty. And somewhere, in another life, Elena was probably falling in love with someone who knew better than to take her for granted.

I walked out the door, hat pulled low, and let the city swallow me whole.