Unspooled
The cable guy was late, which gave Marco too much time to think about the coaxial cable running like a black snake along the baseboard, gathering dust for seven years. Elena had insisted on the premium package β every movie channel, every sports tier β as if she could buy her way out of their emotional bankruptcy with better reception.
"Sorry about the wait," the technician said, crouching beside the wall where Buster, their aging golden retriever, lay watching with rheumy eyes. "Good boy," the man added, scratching behind Buster's ears. The dog's tail thumped once, a dry metronome marking time they'd all run out of.
Marco had already packed Elena's things. Three boxes sat by the door, mostly books and that orange ceramic bowl she'd bought in Tuscany β the trip where she'd met someone else, or maybe that was a different trip. The infidelities had blurred together like channels flipping too fast to follow.
"You want me to disconnect everything today?" the technician asked, his head still half inside the entertainment center.
"Just cut it," Marco said. "All of it."
He walked into the kitchen. On the counter sat the last orange from the tree Elena had planted their first spring together, when they still believed love was something you could cultivate. The fruit had sat there for weeks, its skin growing dimpled and soft, a small sphere of suspended decay.
Marco peeled it. The scent hit him violently β citric acid, memory, the particular way her hands had smelled after gardening. He ate a section, bitter and sweet at once, and thought about how cable television had been theirε ±ε language when they'd run out of real words to say to each other. How many nights had they sat side by side on this couch, illuminated by the same screen, occupying the same darkness without touching?
Buster wandered in, nails clicking on the hardwood. The dog looked at Marco with something like accusation, or maybe just hunger. Marco tossed him an orange segment. Buster sniffed it, then walked away.
"All done," the technician said from the living room. "You're all disconnected."
Marco finished the orange, juice sticking to his fingers like a second skin. He stood at the kitchen window, watching the technician's van pull away, and realized with quiet horror that the house had never been quieter. The cable was gone. Elena was gone. And Buster β good old Buster, who had witnessed every argument, every reconciliation, every false dawn β was now the only living thing who remembered them as they were supposed to be.
"Well," Marco said to the empty room. "Here we are."