Room Service & Other Short Stories



  Room Service & Other Stories

  By Sheena Lopez

  Copyright Sheena Lopez, 2016

  All rights reserved

  Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  Stories- Room Service, Shards of Red & Red Dirt

  About the Author

  Contact the Author

  Room Service

  The couple walked into their hotel room with the musky stench of old cigarettes and dust that hung from the tops of the flower fringed drapes. George booked the hotel months in advance, but the brochure that sparked the idea of a romantic getaway was more alluring than the reality they just stepped into.

  “Is this the best you can do?” Penelope said, trying to hide her disappointment.

  “There are plenty ways we could’ve spent our Valentine’s Day together, George, but this is just not one of them.”

  He starts unpacking his suitcase into the chipped, antique dresser while she stood inside the door clutching her bag, glaring at a picture of a horse running through a pasture that was dangling off the yellow stained walls.

  “I’m sorry Penny, but do we have to argue? If I had known this hotel would be this bad for you I would’ve booked the nicer one across the street,” George said.

  “A woman doesn’t ask for much. Just to feel like she is being listened to at least eighty percent of the time,” she said. “I am still trying to wrap my head around your reasoning behind staying at this dreaded place.”

  “Are you going to come unpack or what? You can’t just stand by the door all weekend,” he said, reaching his hand out for her. She walks up to him, grabs his hand and drops her suitcase.

  “Let’s just take a break. It’s been a long trip and we are both exhausted. Drink?”

  She motions toward the tiny refrigerator and walks to the outdoor patio. “Bring it outside. I don’t want to be in that room.”

  He makes their drinks not even hearing what she says. All that is on his mind is trying to rekindle their marriage. It had been on the rocks for as long as he could remember, but for once he wished she could remember their stay in the exact room they were standing in over forty years ago.

  “We could go down the hall, holding hands, and look at tourist pamphlets. Anything to make your little heart happy,” he said, handing her the drink.

  “What’s the use? Look at us. This is what we do. We get older and sit on the patio discussing how to be happy together. I miss our younger years.”

  “Penny, I wouldn’t change anything about where we have been together. I love how you pick fights over the silliest things. Especially when we go on vacations,” he said.

  “Is it so much to ask that we get clean linen or towels that aren’t unraveling at the ends? I’m already having a hard enough time trying to drink from this soap stained glass.”

  “Ah yes, always the nitpicker. If I dialed the front desk to bring you caviar and champagne would you be happier?” He said.

  “Can we just go to the botanical gardens and pick out a dozen flowers to surround this patio? This isn’t an ideal romantic getaway,” she said, holding back every notion to just pack up all their belongings and take the long trip back home.

  “We could do that if you want. I just want to see the smile that I grew so fond of in New York when you ran into me on the subway forty years ago with those ruby red lips.”

  “I’m trying to be happy, George. The only thing that would make me happier would be to give management a good talking to for false advertisement of this terrible place.”

  He sips his drink and imagines the fun times they had together and how much of their youth that was spent holding one another on rainy nights, and eating cotton candy on the Ferris Wheel at their annual town carnival. He glances at the woman he remembered back then and resents, for a moment, that she isn’t that same woman anymore. The dementia that fogged her brain from a car accident ten years ago was to blame for why she couldn’t remember the old, ragged hotel where he proposed and they first made love.

  “There are more things to do than to sit here complaining. Maybe we could go have dinner at the Gladmore. Bobby took his wife there on a business trip and they had an amazing time. Chandeliers and marbled floors to see the beauty from the bottom up.”

  “Always the dreamer, George. I wouldn’t live up to what your imagination has in store. I have no desire to make you love me any less,” she said, swooping her short blonde hair to the side of her tiny head.

  “Are you kidding me? I love you more and more every day. No matter how much you fight to hate me, I will never forget that night at the hotel with ugly striped comforters on each bed being tossed on the floor.”

  “Ah yes, and the camp out on the comforters on the floor with twenty dollar hamburger breath afterward. I remember wondering why you reserved two beds,” she said, rattling her watered down cranberry juice. She glanced inside room, looking at the bed and noticed they were same ugly pattern as back then.

  “You remember?” He said, grabbing her dainty hands, kissing them. He knew if he would just keep talking about their night together she would remember, but he wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.

  Not even skipping a beat, “Of course I do,” she said with a huge grin as her eyes looked as bright and lively as a little girl getting her first ice cream cone.

  “I couldn’t very well keep you on your toes and curl them if I didn’t have a few things up my sleeve,” he smiled boyishly.

  “I have an idea,” she said, looking up into his slightly wrinkled eyes.

  “Whatever you want, dear.”

  “Hamburgers and fries this evening?”

  He tossed out what was left of his ginger ale onto the dry rotted boards surrounding the patio, lifted his old tired bones from the patio chair, and walked toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  He turned around and smiled, “I’m calling room service.”

  They both giggled, and for once in a very long time, remembered why they fell in love in the first place.

  Shards of Red