The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

With each step, the fog of shock drifted over him. At the snack counter, he bought a bag of Snickers Bites and a blue slush Fanta; in the parking lot, his car shifted into gear; in traffic, a left-turning cab driver flipped him off for running an orange; in the lobby of the hotel, a beautiful woman invited him for a drink at the bar while she rubbed her breasts on his arm; in the elevator, a man asked him if the hooker tried to get him too; in his room, he stood over the motorhome in the dark with Claire’s cellphone in hand. He flipped the main light switch and was not surprised to see the woman in the bedroom and the man asleep on the bench behind the kitchen table. The cat was gone.

He clicked open the last message from Pharmacy and typed I thought we were meeting?

He set the phone on the nightstand and grabbed the comforter blanket from the bed he hadn’t used and cocooned himself next to the Winnebago Indian Motorhome by Tonka, careful not to disturb the sleeping man and woman. For hours his eyes remained pinned, trying to catch movement in the lifeless toys, before he finally drifted off to sleep.

Josh blinked at the light overhead and rolled to his left. He picked up his phone to find more messages from Claire’s mother. He then picked up Claire’s phone to find the same, but also one from Pharmacy: I’m so happy you’re out of the hospital, can I tell people at the conference, we’re all so worried. Second message: And baby if you’re up for a visit I’m more than willing to oblige. The third message was a picture of an average-sized, white, upward-hooking erection. Fourth message: Baby? Fifth message: Claire?

Josh typed, How about tonight in my room?

Pharmacy replied immediately: I called the hospital when I didn’t get a reply. I understand this looks bad but please respect our privacy and space.

As if a sour taste suddenly invaded his entire face, Josh vibrated and twisted his head backwards to escape the sensation. His eyes fell on the motorhome. The man was on the kitchen bench, while in the bedroom, the woman stretched out, legs in a V as a new man pumped into her.

A knock landed on the door and a voice said, “Housekeeping?”

Josh tried to shout the woman away but couldn’t form words—only his vowels were working. He slipped from the bed and unravelled the wrapped blanket. Across the stiff grey carpet, he crawled to the door, got to his knees as the housekeeper’s key card opened the mechanical lock.

“Oh!” Josh wailed and flopped his body against the opening door.

“Sorry. Sorry. I’ll come back in an hour. Sorry.”

He remained there, gathering himself until her heard tiny metallic pinging and an even smaller squeak. As far as he could tell, nothing moved in the motorhome, but…he crawled back to the bed and looked through the windows—the canopy had been closed. The woman was in the back with two babies held to her chest. The other man sat behind the steering wheel; he wore a captain’s hat and a matching white sailor’s suit. The husband stood a foot away. He wore a ball cap and a rumpled suit, looking as if a localized storm had drenched him, in his hand was a small leather suitcase, the tail of a plaid shirt jutting from a seam. The wee expression on his wee face was of sorrow and loss as he stared back at the motorhome that was once his.

“She took it from him and gave it to someone else,” Josh whined into his palms, pressed tight to his mouth. He couldn’t let her do it, he couldn’t.

No fog; his mind was clear. He got to the hospital, stepping past three nurses who recognized him from the gossip mill, and went into the room that his wife shared with three other patients. The curtain circled Claire’s bed, so they’d checked off one step for him. He unplugged the heart monitor attached to her finger, silencing the beeps of her heartbeat. He then yanked the pillow out from behind her head.

Her eyes opened and her lips smacked. She blinked at him. “Josh? Why are you here?”

He faltered, pillow clutched in his hands. “I’m not letting you take anything away from me. Not one damned thing.”

“It’s already done,” she whispered and smiled a mouth full of gold teeth. “And it feels good.”

Fury roared inside. Outside, Josh exhaled heavily through his nose and pushed the pillow against his wife’s sleeping face and kept tight a 300-count after the twitching muscles in her arms ceased their languid movements. He grabbed her hair and pulled her scalp forward to place the pillow behind her head. Not a word to anyone, he jetted from the hospital, jogged to his car, drove through the city, parked in the Radisson lot, and hurried up to his room, so focused that he saw nothing outside the narrow path he followed.

Claire’s cellphone in hand, he typed I HOPE YOU CAN SWIM! and grabbed the man in the sailor suit from the Winnebago and charged to the bathroom. The man sank into the great abyss of hotel waterworks when Josh flushed the toilet.

“I hope you can swim!” he shouted and laughed. Licking his bottom lip, mouth open, eyes stretched wide, he ran back to the bed and wrenched the little babies from the woman’s arms—they were really snug in there—and took them to the microwave. He tossed them in and put twenty minutes on the timer. “Gonna be a warm one!” He laughed harder, his chin pressed to the top of his chest in the universal maniac expression. He grabbed the woman and looked around the room. Back and forth, his head jerked until he saw what he needed. He unwrapped a water cup and wound the plastic over the woman’s face. “This won’t hurt, you’re already dead.”