I stand in the back as the cable installers warm up their voices. My cable installer, the one who invited me, massages his throat, his lips mouthing syllables. They’re wearing their work uniforms, blue polos and black pants and black shoes. I count the tiles in the church’s basement ceiling, tell myself if there’s an even number of squares there won’t be any encores.
I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t seen my cable installer inside a restaurant’s bathroom wall. But there he was, smiling above the urinal advertisement hawking insurance, his body trapped in the floral wallpaper.
A sign.
I had to come.
I tried explaining this to my girlfriend Jessica, but she won’t even hold her breath when driving past a cemetery. “They’re dead,” she always says. Doesn’t mean they can’t get jealous.
The cable installers line up by height. They face the handful of us in the audience and each other. Their voices getting higher and higher, they hum.
The idea to get cable came to me in a dream. In the dream, a robber broke into my house. I caught him rifling through my entertainment stand, and he pulled a gun. I drew my television’s remote like a six-shooter and pressed power. A sitcom where the robber and I were best friends flickered on the screen. I hadn’t seen the show before but knew it was airing on cable.
“I had a dream I was a submarine captain,” Jessica had said the morning after. “Doesn’t mean I should join the navy.”
“It means something. Everything means something.”
“Not this. Besides, no one has cable anymore. Cable’s dead.”
Not for these cable installers.
“Bye, bye, bye,” the cable installers sing, pumping their fists. “Don’t want to be a cable fool for you.”
Flipping through premium channels, my cable installer had told me how they sang popular songs with a cable twist. He packed up and, halfway through the door, handed me a flyer for his show, not giving me a chance to say yes or no, letting fate decide.
The cable installers bow. I try to sneak away, but my cable installer spots me and waves me over.
“What’d you think?”
“Great.”
“Watch anything good yet?”
“Not yet. Been busy, you know?”
My cable installer thanks me for coming, and I head to my car. I call Jessica, but she doesn’t answer. If one or more of the Cable Installers’ Choir’s songs comes on the radio, I tell myself, she’ll call me back before I get home.
I don’t turn on the radio.
I already know fate’s answer.
The lights are on. I walk inside. Jessica’s stuffing clothes into a suitcase. I draw the television remote, which I’d placed in my back pocket before leaving for the show, and press power. A mattress commercial comes on. Jessica slams the door behind her. If another commercial comes on, I tell myself, I’ll chase after her. And I wait for something to mean anything, anything at all.