Free The Other Mr. Bax by Rodney Jones Page B

Dana and I. We were on a houseboat—”
    “Dana? No.” She shook her head. “That didn’t happen, Roland.”
    “But… it did.”
    She lowered herself to the chair behind her, her head still shaking. “What the hell? What are you talking about?”
    “I shouldn’t have the scar?” The look on her face—like she had just been slapped. Roland pulled the question back into his mind, where it shifted from light to dark, from innocent to cruel.
    “I have to go.” Joyce rose from the chair and headed for the door.
    “I’m sorry,” Roland said.
    She turned, raised her hands, looked as though she was about to say something more, but then didn’t. As the door closed behind her, the room seemed to expand, while he seemed to shrink. His stare held the memory of her standing there—just a memory, but without it he’d be alone. He held her in his mind, but then the moment began to pull away, as did all the moments before it—the past, as if none of it had happened. He stared toward the door. His life, like pages ripped from a book—shuffled, shaken, and scattered in a malevolent wind. Anyone could pass through that door. Any scenario could lie behind it. He dropped his head to his pillow, closed his eyes, found a recent memory of Dana, and clung to it.

Chapter eight – the night
    J oyce gazed toward the ceiling of her motel room, sifting through the past hours, searching for anything that might contain a chance of logic. There were moments, back at the hospital—perhaps she could’ve stupidly assumed Roland had somehow defied the limits of modern logistics in his being there, and she could imagine herself finding the compassion to forgive him for all this craziness. But there was one detail she could not overlook: he was not the man she had married; the scar on his back was proof of that. She rolled to her side, gazing off toward the door, trying to recall the last time she’d seen him shirtless. It was not all that long ago.
    She lay still, closed her eyes, her mind slowing, beaten by the non-stop push and pull of the day. The dull hum of nearby traffic pressed against the walls around her—the murmur of the TV in the adjacent room blended with it. Sleep was right there, an inch away, ready for her; and she was ready for it, though not dressed for it. She rolled to her side. The clock on the nightstand showed 11:13.
    Brenda …
    She dug a plastic card from her purse, picked up the phone next to the clock, keyed in the long string of digits printed on the back of the card, and then her sister’s number. Brenda answered, “Hello.”
    “I almost forgot.”
    “You’re in Buffalo?”
    “About ten miles east of Buffalo.”
    “You saw him?”
    She huffed. “I’m not sure what I saw.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Her chest rose and fell with a sigh. “I don’t get it.”
    “It’s him?”
    “I thought it was… he was, at first; I was so convinced. But now I don’t know.”
    “Joyce, you met him? You saw him? I mean, you were there in the guy’s room, weren’t you?”
    Joyce closed her eyes and drew in a breath—her heart thumped along with another noise coming from behind the wall.
    “Joyce?”
    “Yes, I saw him, but he’s not exactly… This isn’t right.”
    “It’s him? He’s there?”
    “Something very… something impossible has happened.” Th-thump, thum thum ... She put her hand to her chest.
    “Jesus, Joyce. Impossible? Like what?”
    “Well, he disappeared yesterday.”
    “Yeah, right. I got that.”
    “I mean, literally.”
    “Literally?”
    “He vanished.”
    “You mean like magic?”
    “I… No. That’s how it looks though. He’d never said a thing about leaving. He was making lunch, and then was gone.”
    “Okay, so… that’s just the way it looks. You didn’t see him go. Nothing magic about that.”
    “He thinks he’s married, Brenda, to another woman. Dana. He doesn’t even know me.”
    “What? What are you talking about?”
    “You know about the