The Last Pool at Midnight

The retirement community's pool was technically closed, but Elena had a key. She'd been their fiber optic tech for three years, running cable through attics and basements, connecting lonely residents to grandchildren who never called. Tonight, she'd finished upgrading Mrs. Calloway's internet and found the old woman weeping.

"She wore this to our wedding," Mrs. Calloway had said, pressing a faded sun hat into Elena's hands. "You're about her age. Take it."

Elena, forty-two and newly divorced, had almost refused. But something in the woman's desperate generosity made her accept.

Now she swam laps in the empty pool, the hat resting on a deck chair. The water was her only refuge from the apartment she couldn't afford and the career that was dying as wireless made her cable-running obsolete. Her ex-husband's voice echoed in her head: *You're too old to start over, El. Too set in your ways.*

She ducked underwater, holding her breath until her lungs burned. When she surfaced, gasping, a man stood at the pool's edge. Maybe fifty, silver-haired, wearing a maintenance uniform.

"You're here late," he said.

"You too."

He sat on the edge, feet in the water. "My wife died six months ago. I keep finding myself places we used to go. She loved this pool."

Elena treaded water. "I'm sorry."

"I'm David."

"Elena."

He didn't ask why she was swimming at midnight or why a stranger's hat sat on the chair beside her towel. He just watched the water, his expression unreadable in the low light.

"I run cable," she said suddenly. "For internet. But everyone's going wireless now. I think I'm becoming obsolete."

David smiled faintly. "My wife was a telephone operator before automated systems came in. She thought it was the end of everything. Then she learned to code at fifty-two. Started her own business at fifty-five."

Elena drifted closer to the edge. "Did she swim here too?"

"Every morning at 5." He stood up. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Maybe."

She watched him walk away, then climbed out of the pool and picked up Mrs. Calloway's hat. It smelled faintly of lavender and determination. She put it on, wet hair and all, and realized she didn't feel obsolete at all.

The cable she'd run her whole life hadn't been connecting wires. It had been connecting people. And she was still good at that.

She grabbed her towel, already planning what to say to David tomorrow.