Set The Alarm by Karen Regen Tuero

Claire, who was in charge of check-in, let Phillip know there was a hitch online: they’d be assigned seats at the airport. So, they left earlier than anticipated, lugging carry-ons from the hotel in the city center into the taxi, Claire watching the clock on her phone to be sure to arrive with plenty of time for the 2:10 flight. But when they got to the counter, the agent said the flight was overbooked.

“But we have seats, don’t we?” Claire said, panicked, and was told they did, but the airline was offering them both a sizable gift card, plus hotel and taxi to fly the next day.

Phillip was excited, but Claire listed the reasons they needed to board today, most notably the children. As proof, she quickly sent a WhatsApp message to their daughter saying they were declining the airline’s generous offer because they missed her and her brother.

“Lol, we didn’t have plans to see you for the next few days,” their daughter said. Their son didn’t respond at all.

“So there,” Phillip said.

“But the plants,” Claire said.

“They’ll manage.”

“There’s work,” she tried.

“Use a sick day. Like me.”

So, after completing the paperwork for the gift cards to be sent home and receiving the vouchers, they reversed course, lugging carry-ons and taking the long taxi ride to the city center. Buckled in, Claire shifted this way and that, trying to get comfortable. Her elastic-waist pants were stretched to their limits from the ten-day jaunt she and Phillip had taken to the island. She had begged him not to book another all-inclusive holiday like last year’s to a different island. Technically, he had listened – booking just breakfast and dinner. But when they arrived, she learned both meals were all-you-can-eat buffets.

And so, like last year—because with only two hands, it was impossible to carry dinner plates and bowls of appetizers, soups, cheeses, bread, salads, entrees, fruits, and desserts in one trip, not to mention breakfast plates of muffins and croissants and crepes and omelets and glasses of fruit juices and smoothies and flutes of champagne—meals became hourlong activities with multiple trips to the buffet that spanned several rooms, each with many individual serving stations. By day three, her jaw hurt from chewing, and she wondered if excessive masticating could permanently damage the jaw. By day ten, she had only to glimpse a muffin at the first station to become instantly full. Meanwhile, Phillip – naturally thin with boyish looks—joyfully loaded plates and bowls with his selections, consuming enough for a roomful of Phillips.

When had quality gourmet food become standard? she thought. It had to be in the last twenty years. And now it was this way everywhere.

Here, because they were on an island, the highlight was seafood. At dinner, assessing the endless series of long white serving dishes filled with the likes of hake, sea bass, and mahi-mahi, it was impossible not to remember the sea was running out of fish. Phillip, between bites, agreed and made a special effort to bring her mushrooms and eggplant but took pride in exceeding his personal record for sea bass—four fillets in one sitting!—saying if he didn’t eat it, one of the three hundred other guests would. Or worse, it would be thrown out and wasted.

“Of course,” she said and reached across to his plate to break off a corner of his mahi-mahi because there was nothing worse than being an extremist.

It was delicious. And who knew, it could have been obtained by sustainable means.

Yeah, right.

Her thoughts drifted to one of her first impressions of their hotel room. Upon entering the glassed-in bathroom, she noticed beside the toilet, built into the wall, a shiny aluminum casing with a sturdy black toilet brush inside. Later, she saw that the restrooms in the resort’s public spaces all had them. She, and especially Phillip, had gotten good use out of them. Eat. Then shit. Eat. Then shit. That’s what their ten-day trip had been all about.

***

The taxi arrived at the city center, and soon, they checked in at the artsy, budget hotel they had used the previous night after returning from the island. She liked the library motif. Behind the reception desk, the glossy wallpaper showed well-stocked shelves with handsome books, which made her feel that staying here meant falling into a storybook.

The clerk who, a couple of hours ago, had helped with the taxi to the airport greeted them with surprise; had their flight been canceled?

“No, no,” Claire said, and not wanting to get into it, joked that her husband couldn’t get enough of the place.

They lugged the carry-ons onto the elevator and into their new room, which felt bigger than the last one. The balcony shutters were closed, but from the edges, light entered, glittering, as did the sounds of tourist buses.

Phillip flung himself on his back onto the king-sized bed and stretched out, elated. “Another day to enjoy the city!” he said, then seeing her expression, poked her, making a teasing pouty face.

She told him all she could think of was the children. Her plants. Her job at the other end.

“Relax,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll be on the flight.”

So, they napped for a couple of hours, then went to the market, where Phillip pointed here and there. “Oh look, those oysters, what a deal! Do you know what that would cost back home? Give me four,” he told the shucker before squeezing on lemon and sitting down at the stool and slurping one after another, stopping only to ask if Claire was positive she didn’t want one. When he finished, he looked right and left at the stalls, sampling green olives and goat cheese, fresh bread with pernil. On the stall’s counter, Claire spotted a little clay figurine of an oversized pig dressed in a collared shirt, and when she met Phillip’s eyes, he said, “What are you laughing at?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said and fixed his shirt collar.

The days were long here, the sun out late. They stopped at a park bench under the shadiest tree, and Phillip stretched back, untucking his shirt. Soon, she felt his head drop onto her shoulder and then heard snoring. It was a soothing sound, the backdrop of a thirty-year marriage. And yet, at several points on the trip, she had imagined what it would be like if she had been separated from him unintentionally. Or intentionally. This took many forms in her imagination. At the airport, after landing on the island, Claire stopped to use the restroom, never returning to the designated spot by Tourist Info, disappearing into a taxi alone. Or at the resort, having him go ahead to dinner, saying she needed more time to get ready; instead, using the delay to step out the lobby doors into a new life.

Phillip’s head gave a jolt on her shoulder that must have woken him from the dream he was having. Bolting upright on the bench, he said, “Ready?”

“For?” she said, only to find they had resumed walking on the street, looking for a spot for wine.

For the first time, they spoke about the gift card. He still couldn’t believe the airline was giving such big amounts. He ran through all the things he could do with his card once it came, like buying a new laptop.

“Your old one still works,” she said.

“It won’t last forever. What’ll you do with yours?”

She thought it over. Neither of their children needed help. In fact, any time she bought them anything, it seemed the value of the gift was too much or not enough.

“Donate it, maybe,” she said.

“To me!” he jested.

They let themselves be seated at the little restaurant bar with the local men smoking and drinking out front and the ham hocks hanging over the bar. The waiter poured Phillip red wine from the bottle, and Phillip said, “Ah, that’s good! I’ll have a ham sandwich to go with it,” and when the waiter asked if she’d have anything, Claire sipped from her water bottle, and Phillip said she was just keeping him company. The waiter winked at her, and she could not get over this wink.

Had he seen this picture before? Was it often the case that the men could eat and drink endlessly, and the women simply didn’t have the capacity? Or was the wink over how she and Phillip looked? She, with the kind of wide-brimmed sunhat sold in the tourist stalls lining the city; Phillip, with his oversized aviator Polarized glasses worn atop his head? Did he think they looked like silly foreigners?

She glanced past Phillip, where behind the bar, a wiry middle-aged worker prepared sandwiches, calling out to the waiter, juggling plates and glasses, doing the work of half a dozen men. She wondered how long his shift was. Did his feet hurt? Was he bothered by the humidity?

She was. The fan in the corner wasn’t reaching their table, and she felt sweat dripping down the right side of her face. Her thoughts felt hazy. When her leg accidentally touched Phillip’s under the table, it felt surprisingly hard. Looking across at him, she noticed his face appeared pudgier, and the sounds of pleasure he was making tasting the sandwich were distinctive and louder. In fact, after he settled the bill at the table, she half expected him to leave on all fours, continuing through the streets, grunting all the way.

“Your father has been transformed by this trip,” she might message the children. “Once a man, he’s now a pig!”

The children would probably send laughing emojis, never realizing the situation was dire. But she thought, How would he get home? Did they allow swine aboard flights? Therapy pets were a thing, of course. But certainly, no matter how much the definition had expanded, pigs wouldn’t qualify. And if so, then what? As an independent passenger. How would a swine pass through a border security checkpoint? The agent would inspect the passport photo, comparing it with Phillip, the pig who would be resting on his haunches, tipping his head back as far as it would go. No, Phillip would never succeed in boarding the flight tomorrow.

“Set the alarm, will you, hon,” he said as she tucked him into the bed that night, his head protruding in the dark in a disturbing way.

“Oh sure, you’ve got it. Ten o’clock? Flight’s at 2:10. That ought to do it,” she said, only pretending to set it before putting the phone down on his bedside table.

“I think the gift cards will be there when we get back. These days, everything is fast,” he said.

“Maybe,” she said, just as his snoring began, louder than ever before.

Carefully lifting the covers, she joined him on the opposite side, her own phone set for a much earlier hour.