The Last Connection

Miles had been a cable technician for seventeen years, and in that time, he'd learned that people forgot you were there the moment you started working with wires. They'd fight on the phone, cry in the kitchen, have sex in the next room—all while you crouched beneath their TV, connecting them to the world.

He'd become something else, too. Not officially. But when you spent your days in strangers' homes, watching their lives unfold like episodes you hadn't chosen to stream, you started to feel like a spy without a country. He knew who was having affairs (new cable box in the guest room), who was broke (basic package, complained about every fee), who was lonely (premium everything, asked him to stay).

Then there was Mara.

She lived in the gray duplex off Elm, always paid in cash, always wore red. She'd nicknamed him Fox—because of his rusty hair, she said, though the way she said it made him feel like something else. Something hunted.

"You see everything, don't you, Fox?" she'd ask, leaning in the doorway while he worked. He could smell her perfume—something expensive and lonely.

"Just the cables, Mara."

"Bullshit." She'd laugh, and he'd feel it behind his ribs like a swallowed stone. "You see how people really live. That's power."

The last time he saw her, she was packing boxes. Another man's voice came from the bedroom—deep, confident, the kind of voice that got what it wanted.

"Moving?" Miles had asked, his fingers fumbling the coaxial cable.

"Phoenix," she said. "New start. You should try it sometime, Fox."

She'd touched his shoulder then—just for a second, her palm warm through his uniform. He'd wanted to ask her to stay, wanted to ask what Phoenix had that he couldn't give her, wanted to ask if she'd ever actually seen him at all.

Instead he'd finished the job, collected his forty dollars, and left.

That was three years ago. Sometimes, working in some stranger's house, he'd catch a scent of her perfume and freeze, cable in hand, wondering if she was happy, wondering if the man in Phoenix knew how she took her coffee, wondering if anyone had ever really seen her either.

The wires connected everyone else. They'd always connected him to nothing.