Room 713

Sarah Richards had been standing in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts for only ten minutes when she realized what it was that made her so uneasy about the room: It made her think of the hotel from The Shining. Everything shimmered in an oppressive gold light that seemed to be meant to assure guests that they were more successful than they actually were. At least, that was the case tonight, as she stood in her red cocktail dress amongst some of the driest company she had ever been around. Psychologists and Psychiatrists – she was never able to remember the difference between the two – mingled with educators, discussing the finer points of teaching special needs children, which must have been a rather amusing subject if the constant echo of laughter bouncing around the room was any indication.

She saw her husband, Max, from across the room. He was surrounded by a group of men, probably colleagues of his, though it was impossible to tell them apart from the rest of the groups of men peppered about. They were all staring intently at him, and he seemed to be holding court rather expertly, making all the right gestures and cracking a smart joke or two to hide the seriousness of the topic of conversation. He was always good at that; knowing what to say and when to say it. Looking at the men that were listening to him, one would think he was able to hold someone’s interest for days. Perhaps that were true, but for Sarah days were about as long as it had lasted. 

It was something she had admired about him in college – how businesslike he was – but, for the three years they had been married, she felt like she was never allowed to have any fun. It was always his work that came first, his happiness. Then, when Ben was born, and diagnosed with signs of autism shortly after his first birthday, she had no hope of ever having that fun she so desired. She knew it was unfair, and she loved Ben - she really did - but, she couldn’t help but feel like she had wasted the year before he was born on Max. What was worse, she knew that she had only stayed because of the way he was able to rationalize things. It wasn’t unlike the way he was talking to his associates now; he would say exactly what she needed to hear, and she would begin to believe there was hope. 

His ability with words was what got her here in the first place. They had been separated for three months, only exchanging the occasional phone call to talk about their son, when he managed to persuade her into coming to this benefit. Their lawyers had suggested trying the relationship out one more time before they finalized things, anyway, so he eventually wore her down until she accepted.

Max had moved on to impress another group of people while she stood, leaning on the bar. David finally had made his way back to her with the drink she had ordered more than ten minutes ago. She honestly thought it was nice that David could make mistakes like that; she didn’t feel so imperfect next to him. 

“Thank you,” she said, taking the drink. She glanced quickly in Max’s direction to make sure he wasn’t looking and kissed David’s cheek quickly before pulling away and taking a sip of her drink.

“So, I’ll call you later? When I’m back to my room?”

“Sure. Thanks for keeping me company tonight.” She smiled at him. The crowd had begun to thin, and she decided this was the right time to get away from him and go back to Max. 

Max had seen the two of them talking, but not for very long, and he hadn’t seen the kiss. The jealousy he had felt at first quickly subsided when he saw the man walk away. He thought about going to her – she looked very alone and out of place over by the bar – but he knew he had to make nice with some of the people here. He was looking for a new job to help pay for extra support for Ben, and so far he had been unsuccessful. He hoped tonight would prove more fruitful.

He broke away from the last group of people as the crowd dispersed, and he saw Sarah coming towards him. He quickly finished whatever he had been drinking – he couldn’t remember what he had ordered anymore – and went to meet her halfway across the room, pulling her close when they met. 

Max and Sarah half-stumbled into room 713 as the clock on the nightstand read 11:34 p.m. Max grabbed Sarah by her arm after she had started walking into the room, pulling her close to him and kissing her as if to make up for the last three hours he was not able to. He kicked the door shut while they kissed, which caused it to slam louder than either of them was expecting, making both of them jump. They laughed, and Sarah slowly slid out of Max’s arms.

“Hold on a second, I need to call the sitter.”

“It’s eleven-thirty at night, babe, she’s probably asleep.”

“I know, but I just know I won’t be able to sleep without making sure everything went alright with Ben.”

“Who said anything about sleeping tonight?” Max said with a smile as he sauntered over to the bed, where Sarah now sat, looking at her phone. She laughed slightly at his joke, but stopped when he began to rub her shoulders.

“Oh come on, Max. It’s been a long night. You’re drunk.”

“Well, it’s not like you were just sipping on your Cosmos, either.” He said that last line with a hint of distaste in his voice, as if he resented the fact that she enjoyed the flashy drinks.

“ Jesus, fine. We’re both drunk. All the more reason that we should just get to sleep. Besides, I wanted to see if I couldn’t talk you into leaving early tomorrow, instead of Sunday, maybe surprising the sitter with a day off, you know?”

Max sighed, taking his hands from her shoulders and sitting heavily on the bed next to her.

“I don’t know, I kind of wanted to try and take in the sights. This is our first time on this side of the state, maybe we should get to know it a little, for when we take Ben to Six Flags?”

“This place is a shithole, Max. One look out of the window could tell you that.”

“What about the Hall of Fame? We’ve always wanted to go.”

“You’ve always wanted to go.” She corrected him, and ended that conversation by holding up a finger to Max, raising the phone to her ear. Max responded by kicking off his shoes then turning on the TV, not caring how much noise he made in the process. Sarah scoffed at him, standing and leaving the room, just as the sitter picked up the phone.

“Hey, Chelsea…” her voice trailed off as she gently closed the door behind her.

Before he let himself get settled on the bed, Max made his way to the mini bar, spurned by the earlier talk of alcohol. Trying to rid his mind of the thoughts of Sarah’s Cosmopolitan, he grabbed the depressingly small bottle of Jack Daniels and took a swig.

The clock on the nightstand read 11:59 p.m. when Sarah returned to the room. It was then that she noticed how perfect everything looked in the room, and it made her uncomfortable. She wished the television wasn’t propped perfectly on top of the dresser and next to the coat hangers. She wished the mini bar wasn’t kitty cornered in the far corner of the room. She wished everything wasn’t such a perfect distance away from the windows so that you could see all of the buildings of the city, or the river, or the tip top of the tallest roller coaster and the amusement park. She wished, instead, that the room was messy and out of order. She wished that she could escape the standards of perfection that had driven Max for as long as she had known him. 

She found him sprawled out on the bed, his head propped up by two of the abnormally large pillows that were always found on hotel beds, the half-empty Jack Daniels bottle in his hand. The TV was still on, and he seemed to only be half-watching it, perhaps not at all.

“Everything’s all set with Ben. There were no problems,” she said, getting the expected response: a slight grunt from the mass of flesh on the bed some would call a man. “Can you just turn that off? We’re here, together. We should be making the best of that.”

He separated the bottle from his mouth to respond, “I was trying to make the best of this earlier, and you wanted nothing to do with me.”

“I didn’t mean like that.” She stopped there, assuming what she had said had clarified what she meant.

“I just want to see how the Bruins did, give me a minute.” He turned his attention back to the TV.

“God damn it, can’t you just leave all the Boston shit behind for even one night?” She sighed, and shifted her body, wishing she had space to move, yet strangely all of the furniture that was carefully arranged in the room to make you feel like there was more space now seemed to be closing in on her. She needed to get out of the room.

Her phone rang in her hand, and she was more than happy to answer it.

“That might be Chelsea again, I’m going to take this outside.”

“Yeah, whatev-” she didn’t even let him finish, closing the door behind her, not so softly this time.

She took a few deep breaths before bringing the phone back up to her ear. 

“Hey David.”

“Hey there. I’m almost to my room.”

“Ok. Well, I can’t talk right now.” She had begun pacing in front of the door due to a mixture of excitement and nerves that had taken hold of her when she heard his voice on the other side of the phone.

“How long until you can come?”

“It won’t be long, he’s drinking.”

“He treating you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine. See you soon.” 

“Alright, just give me a call before you head down.”

The smile that had made its way onto her face while she talked disappeared quickly as her phone folded shut. She knew she was being hypocritical, answering that call just after she had told Max to leave the “Boston shit,” as she had so poetically put it, behind. But, clearly things weren’t working out, right? The only difference between now and three months ago was that they were in a hotel room on the other side of the state, rather than in their own bedroom. Really, that made it even worse. She felt like people could see them here, like their problems seeped through the walls and disturbed the people in the rooms around them.

Or, maybe, she just wasn’t giving him a fair chance. Things had gotten a lot better over the last couple months, at least to the point where she was willing to give this a try. Maybe she should go back in there and really put some effort into their relationship. This is ultimately what she decided on, putting on her best smile and opening the door to the room again.

Upon opening the door again, she saw that Max hadn’t moved.

“How’d they do?” she asked, half hoping he would be too distracted to hear.

“Lost.”

“That’s too bad.” Not wanting to press the issue anymore, she simply let the conversation die down. She moved to the dresser next to the TV, careful not to get between Max and the screen, as she placed her phone into her purse. She instantly regretted that decision, feeling like she would much rather have the phone close by. She reached back in, almost grabbing her phone back from the purse, but stopped herself. Hadn’t she just decided that she would give him a chance? Surely that meant she could leave her phone where it was, and isolate the two of them from any outside distractions for the time being.

This seemed logical enough to satisfy her, as she pulled her hand from her purse without the phone. She moved to the bed, planting a convincing smile on her face, and lay down next to Max.

The extra weight on the bed was so foreign to him that it proved to be more than enough to draw his attention away from the TV and turn his head sideways to face her. There she was, looking at him and smiling. It had been a long time – probably longer than the three months they had spent apart – since he had seen her smile at him like that. He smiled back, turned the TV off, and rolled over onto his side to fully face her.

He reached his arms around her, and she could smell the alcohol on his breath and knew her claim earlier had been true; he had drunk a lot more tonight than just that small bottle of Jack and a few beers downstairs. She knew at that moment that she could not let him do what it was that he wanted to do, as he began to tug on the zipper which ran down the back of her dress, yet she had nowhere to go now that she was on the bed. It was far too large for her to get out of without making a big deal out of it. All she could hope was that he would understand subtleties, as she let the smile leave her face.

It was a combination of the disappearance of the smile and the way she shrugged that told Max he should stop. Then, a voice in his head spoke up.

Just go for it, the voice said. She has to want it; it’s been three months for her, too.

And for a moment, he wanted to obey this voice, and continue unzipping her dress. The impulse did not last long, however, and he pulled his arms back, letting them return to his sides.

“Sorry,” she said quietly, “I’m just not there yet.”

“Ok, I got it.”

Neither of them felt like there was anything else to be said, yet the silence in the room quickly became unnerving. Their silence gave way to the sounds of the hotel. Max was positive he could hear the numbers on the digital clock change with each passing minute, until that sound was drowned out by the sound of their neighbors. Clearly, the party hadn’t quite ended for them, as they seemed to be having the time of their lives with each other. Soon, Max and Sarah’s room was filled with muffled moans and laughs, accompanied by the occasional bump against the wall the two rooms shared.

The clock read 12:25 a.m. before Max decided to speak again, breaking a solid ten minutes of silence.

“So, what do we do?”

As if breaking the silence gave them permission to be more comfortable with each other, Sarah shifted closer to Max, placing her head on his shoulder, reaching her arm across his waist.

“Just because I don’t want to fuck doesn’t mean I don’t want to be here.” She sounded almost guilty as she spoke. “Let’s just talk; it’s been a while since we’ve even done that.”

“Alright, then, what do you want to talk about?” 

She wished he would put more effort into this; it wasn’t like she wouldn’t rather be someplace else right now. 

“Well, I did meet someone tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“To help with Ben, you know?”

“Is he a doctor, or…”

“Specialized teacher. He works at a school in Cambridge – I can’t remember the name. Anyways, he seems to think that putting Ben into the public school system is a big mistake. He says he’ll just be left behind in those classes.”

“Yeah,” he paused, as if contemplating if he should say his next words, “you have a knack for doing whatever some strange man at a party tells you to, don’t you?” He knew the words had hurt by the way she sat up and just stared at him for what felt like forever.

“You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you.” She practically spit on him as a result of the ferocity with which she repeated herself.

“You wanted to go to this goddamned benefit! These are your people here, I would think you’d want to hear what they think we should do with your son!” By this point, she had gotten up and was standing over him at the foot of the bed.

“You’re right, these are my people, and I want to listen to them and make the decisions I’m qualified to make!”

“Don’t you dare try to tell me that I’m not qualified to be a part of this decision. You haven’t lived it firsthand for the last three months! Besides,” she even managed to laugh a small, hateful laugh as she finished, “you don’t look qualified for shit right now, you fucking drunk.”

“Fuck you!” He had sat up now, as if ready to get off the bed and go after her.

“No, that’s the one thing we’ve already discovered you won’t be doing tonight. You better enjoy listening through the walls, because that’s all the action you’ll be getting.” By the time she had finished her sentence, she had moved to the door and opened it. She punctuated her last word by stepping out of the room and slamming the door loudly. The slam seemed to have startled the couple more than it did Max, because the silence coming through the wall rivaled that in room 713.

She knew she should be thanking him, really, for giving her a reason to leave the room. The first thing she wanted to do, now that she could be away from him for a while, was to have a cigarette. As she headed to the elevator down to the lobby and out the sliding glass doors which led to the street, she thought of how things had gone almost exactly as she expected.

Sarah had not been entirely truthful with Max – he did know David, just not personally. He was a child psychologist turned teacher, and he did teach at a school in Cambridge which specialized in helping autistic children. Max only knew him from the smell he found on her three months ago.

That night, as she turned the key in the lock of the front door of their house as quietly as possible, she hoped he would be too lost in sleep to hear the familiar creaks and groans as she slowly pushed the door open. She had intended to make a quick but silent dash for the downstairs bathroom to take a quick shower, and then quietly slip into bed next to Max. Instead, he had been sitting at the table in the dining room, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the previous day’s newspaper. 

“I was worried.” he said, as if he were the one who needed to explain his actions.

“I’m sorry, it was a late night at work-”

“Save it, I can smell him from here.”

There wasn’t much more to it than that. There hadn’t been any yelling, or tears, or hands or fists flying. He had simply said those words, stood up, and left the house, getting in his car and driving to god-knows-where. He smelled like alcohol when he returned, which was a first since Ben had been born. He said nothing to her as he packed some clothes and a few other belongings, and simply left. A few days later, he called, from where he didn’t say, and they had decided they needed to divorce. Three months after that, he had called her and invited her to this benefit dinner. 

Now, here she was, standing outside the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts, smoking a cigarette after having just called her husband a “fucking drunk,” and yet she wasn’t ashamed, or even sorry. Tonight had shown her that she was only wrong for doing what she did that night in the eyes of Max and the law. She hated Max. He was a boring, arrogant man who seemed to pride himself on the fact that he had no vices and led a perfectly guilt-free life, helping children left and right and earning more than enough money to give his own family a wonderful life. The act of smoking in and of itself was her own private way of lashing out at him. She hadn’t touched a cigarette since her senior year of high school until he walked out that night. Even though she knew the tar filling her lungs and would eventually kill her, she felt like she was breathing fresh, guilt-free air. She was finally allowed to do something that, for all intents and purposes in their relationship, was wrong.

As she finished off the cigarette and tossed the butt on the ground, she knew she was about to do something else that was wrong: she was going to see David. She had spent the majority of the night talking to him and sharing drinks, even risking a few wanderings of her hands when she was sure Max wasn’t looking. Contrary to what she had told Max earlier, they had actually spent very little time talking about Ben. There had been a lot of “what ifs” thrown around; “What if you and Max don’t work out?” “What if we move to Cambridge, to be closer?” None of these questions felt unnatural to them, which was mostly a result of the regularity with which they saw each other between the night Max left and now. They felt comfortable with each other, but most importantly, they were happy. She knew, for instance, that when she got to David’s room, she wouldn’t stop him from unzipping her dress, like she had with Max. The thought of him seeing her naked felt more right than it had with Max for a long time. She took a couple deep breaths, and looked around. What she saw didn’t impress her; the view from the sidewalk of the hotel simply presented her with the underside of the highway, which consisted almost solely of large dirt piles. The streets were wet, suggesting it had rained earlier, and traffic was minimal, which meant that either everyone was already home, or people hadn’t begun to leave the local bars yet. She shook her head, wondering why she ever agreed to come out to this city, and walked back through the sliding glass doors into the hotel.

The clock hanging high above the ground in the hotel lobby, which was a classic analog clock complete with roman numerals, read 12:52 when she walked under it. As she made her way to the elevator, she could still hear dull music and a low murmur of voices coming from the ballroom, suggesting that the dinner had not quite yet ended for some people. She knew it had for David, though, and that’s all that mattered to her at that instant. 

By the time she reached his door – room 620 – the clock in the lobby would have read 12:55. She knocked twice; quietly because, even a floor below she felt Max might hear, and he might come down to investigate what she was up to. David answered the door, blinking at the brightness of the hallway which was, indeed, extreme compared to the darkness she saw behind him in his room. He looked as if he had fallen asleep.

“Sarah?”

“Hi, David.” She smiled, and this time it was a genuine, unforced smile, as she leaned forward to kiss his lips. They were dry, which confirmed that he had been sleeping. “Max and I had a fight… I needed to see you.”

“That’s good – I mean, a shame, about you and Max, don’t get me wrong. But, I’m happy that you’re here, it’s just…”

“Just what?” She was growing impatient; she had expected a much better welcome than what she was getting.

“I thought you were going to call before you came down. I would have gotten ready.”

“Oh. I would have called, but I was just downstairs smoking. I just needed to get away after the fight, I didn’t even think to grab my…” her voice trailed off as her mind slowly began piecing together the last half hour; slowly coming to the conclusion of the one, important thing she had forgotten: she had left her phone in the room. “Shit, my phone!”

She didn’t even bother explaining anything to David as she moved as quickly as she could – she never realized how hard it was to run in heels until just now – to the elevator. After pressing the button five or six times, she decided the elevator was not moving fast enough for the severity of this situation. She took the stairs instead, realizing that she’d wasted what might have been valuable time waiting for an elevator to take her one floor.

By the time she slid the card key in and out of the electronic lock, waiting for the agonizingly slow split second that it took for the light to go from red to green, allowing her entrance, the clock on the nightstand in the room read 1:05 a.m., not even an hour after she had left. Yet, the damage had been done. She saw the remnants of the mini bar scattered over the floor of the room. As she stepped inside to turn the lights on – he must have turned them off soon after she had left, she guessed – she kicked the now empty bottle of Jack Daniels he had been nursing earlier.

Her eyes to moved to where she had last left her purse: straight ahead, next to the TV. It was still there, but it had been tipped over, and some of its contents had been allowed to pour out onto the floor. The phone was not on the floor, and as she picked up her purse and quickly rummaged through it, she knew it wasn’t in there as well. Then, she saw the hole in the wall, with a few shattered, plastic remains of her phone on the ground nearby. He had looked into her phone, saw that it was not, in fact, Chelsea who had called the second time, and thrown it at the wall before going to the mini bar. That left one question unanswered: where was Max?

“What’s wrong with me?” he asked, as he stepped out of the bathroom. It was only in the absence of the sound that she realized the sink had been running, possibly cold water for him to splash on his face.

“Max? Oh, Max… I…”

“No, seriously. What’s so fucking wrong with me that I’m not good enough for you? What is it? Is my dick too small? Is that it?” His words and inflection were far from perfect. He had drunk a lot in a very small amount of time, and it was showing.

“No, Max. Jesus, what are you saying? There’s nothing wrong with you!”

“No? Nothing wrong with me?” These hardly came out as questions, as he yelled them. “What is it, then, that makes you want to fuck one of those faggots down there? Huh?”

She winced at that word, which she had never heard him use before in her life, and knew that if it weren’t for the alcohol he would have hated himself for saying it. Perhaps he would still, once he sobered up.

“It’s the same guy as before, isn’t it? You never stopped seeing him. I left you, trying to make you feel guilty about something, and instead you just moved on without a care in the world.”

“Well what the hell was I supposed to do? I didn’t know if you were ever going to come back. I needed someone to help with Ben for Christ’s sake!”

“To help with…” He paused as he figured things out in his head. “That guy you said you met downstairs tonight, that’s him, isn’t it? That’s what you mean by helping with Ben. You were going to put him in his school, without ever telling me that you were fucking him?”

“You didn’t want to go along with it before you knew I was with him, did you really expect me to do that?”

“I think it’s fair that I would have expected you to never sleep with someone else in the first place.” The way he said that, she would have never guessed that he had been drinking at all. It reminded her eerily of that night three months ago; the way he didn’t really seem bothered by what she did.  Just as before, she wasn’t sure how to respond to him.

“I called my lawyer,” he seemed content to carry the conversation for now, “you can expect the papers very, very soon.”

“Max, I never wanted this.” She had begun to cry, and she didn’t know why. Isn’t this what she had wanted all night? Why was it so hard to let go, now that she had the perfect chance?

“Just shut up.”

“Please, Max. We can’t do this. Our lawyers were right before. We can’t put Ben through a divorce right now. David agrees-” She didn’t know why she let that slip out, but she instantly regretted doing so. It seemed to flick a switch in Max that she didn’t know existed, as he came at her and, in three impossibly long strides, he was upon her, his hands closing around her throat.

He tightened his grip on her throat with every intention of ending her life, until he looked in her eyes and saw the pain he was causing her. He knew the damage that he would cause by gripping even slightly tighter would be irreversible. He let her go, pushing her onto the floor, as he took a couple steps back, now standing over her.

“We should go.” he said, and she saw in his eyes that he did not intend to hurt her anymore. She saw that he felt sorry for almost strangling her, and what she saw in his eyes hurt her more than any of the words he had said to her that night. Why should he feel sorry for what she caused?

“Maybe we should.”

“Are you going to stay? With…” he probably would never say his name for the rest of his life.

“No, I just want to go home to my son. Our son.”

The clock on the nightstand read 2 a.m. when they closed the door to room 713 for the last time. The analog clock in the lobby read 2:05 by the time they had officially checked out of the room. Sarah knew, as they walked outside and waited for the cabs they had called from the room, that she would call David tomorrow, and explain what had happened. There was no harm in not seeing him now; it’s not like she and Max were mending any fences any time soon.

“So, what do we do?” he had asked for the second time that night. She noticed he was keeping his distance, as if he felt like he could never get close to her again. She wished he would move closer.

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug, “I just don’t know.” What neither of them could know at that time, as he gently closed the cab door after she had gotten in, that apologetic look still on his face, looking like it would never disappear, is that they would never physically see each other again. Max would meet David eventually, but only while Ben was dropped off at his father’s for weekends. He would not go to Sarah and David’s wedding, nor she to his when he finally decided to remarry. Early on, as Ben came to talk, even though that would be a struggle, Max and Sarah would tell him about each other, and how they had once loved each other, but they would never be able to explain to their son why he couldn’t call David his dad, and why he only got to see his real dad every so often. Ben would never understand, because with the help of David’s school, he would have no problems meeting the only girl he would ever date when he was nineteen. Neither of his parents would live to see them marry, or to have two healthy children of their own. They never would have a reason to visit a room like room 713 for the same reasons as his parents, and if Max and Sarah knew that now, as her cab pulled away and he got into his, they would agree that it all had been worth it.