Read Online The Other Mr. Bax by Rodney Jones - Free Book Online Page B

something he’d missed before. “My being here. And you.”
    “What?”
    “Really, why are you here?”
    The woman shook her head—her jaw hanging open, her brow bunched up into disbelief.
    Roland sighed. “I just don’t understand what’s going on, why I’m here.” He blinked—“Yeah, this”—and gently patted the bandage wrapped around his head.
    She glanced over her shoulder as though evaluating her options.
    “All right.” He nodded. “Okay…”
    She turned and stared at him.
    “Do you want to come in and”—His chest rose—“and talk?”—then fell.
    The woman’s eyes glistened with the onset of tears. With a quiver in her voice, she said, “You want to know why I’m here? Fuck you.” She took a step forward. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?” As her pink-rimmed eyes drilled into his, it began to sink in just how real she was. “No?” Her nostrils flared. “Not a fuckin’ clue, do you?”
    It made sense, and it made absolutely no sense at all—this craziness, the hospital, the cops, and then Kate and Brian’s indifference, like it was no big deal, something he’d quickly get over. But this was more than just a mistake, a delusion, an idea, an absurd concept, or whatever—it was her, Joyce Rubens—solid, present, the little girl he was infatuated with nearly forty years earlier—now a confused, hurt, very angry woman.
    “Uh… you believe that… that we’re… No, I didn’t… I wasn’t—”
    “ What is wrong with you?” she snapped.
    “Please.” He nodded toward the empty chair to his right. “I need someone to listen to me.”
    Joyce raised a hand to her cheek and wiped away a tear. She turned her head toward the hallway behind her, then stood there as if reconsidering the world she had just come from—so close to escape. It seemed she was about to walk away, on the edge of being done with him, but then she turned. Another muddled silence hung in the air. Roland wanted to say something. But what? The right words, a place to start… in such a delicate tangle. Finally Joyce stepped forward and pushed the door shut behind her.
    “How did they find you?” he said.
    She stood there, her back to him, unmoving, her hand yet on the door handle.
    “Brian and Kate, I mean.”
    She turned, glared at Roland, her chest heaving. She clasped her hands together to stop their trembling.
    “I’m confused,” Roland continued.
    “Stop it!” She let out a huff.
    The low hum of a fan came from somewhere nearby, and then the faint rumble of a vehicle, perhaps a motorcycle going up the road outside the hospital.
    “You’re confused? I hate this,” she said. “I don’t… It scares me.”
    Roland drew in a deep breath. “Do you want to just sit for a minute?” He pointed to the chair. “Please.”
    She gazed toward the chair. The fire that was in her eyes the moment before seemed to die down, if only a little. She stepped over to the chair, dropped down onto its seat, then, still struggling to control her trembling, she folded her arms across her chest, lowered her eyes, and said, “I thought something really awful had happened to you.”
    The loose end of logic seemed to twist back on itself. This flood of emotion was too intimate, clearly intended for someone else—her husband, not him. He felt like an imposter, a voyeur, like he had unwittingly tricked her simply by looking like someone she knew.
    She lifted her head—her eyes examining his, his face, his neck, his ears. Her chin quivered. “Oh, Roland”—her anguish tugged at his—“why’d you do this?”
    There was something strangely pleasant about being so close to someone else’s suffering. Perhaps it was her apparent trust. It amazed him and frightened him at the same time. It was flattering and wrong. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Brian and Kate thought I should see you—that it’d… I guess I was hoping all this might finally make sense. That you were… I know I’m not