Vacation (21 page)

Myers had never heard of anybody going through something like that and not going home.

What happened to the engine? he asked.

I started it and I was saved.

In Bluefields it was dusk and a hundred years’ worth of birds were flying in, coming over the rooftops. The birds landed and landed on wires, on posts. Still more arrived and more, circling in from all sides. They were strikes, clouds. The noise was an invasion, the air was a long note. It cannot be described on a page. It would be impossible to capture in a movie. There is no way to represent it. Being there wouldn’t do it. You’d have to
be Myers
, see what he saw. It was like an emergency, like he had stopped breathing, the first bell toll of the apocalypse. Meanwhile around them men chopped their coconut, chatted among themselves. That’s simply how things move in this wet country.

I’d like to go home, the man said. Are you like most people at home?

Myers is like most people at home.

Chapter Eighteen

What is your wife doing right now?

Is it depressing not to know? What kind of life did she want that you weren’t able to give her? What part of your life did she reject? That is, what part of
you
did she reject?

Did she want money? Did she want youth? Did she want fun? Did she want someone else, someone new, someone without the same problems, opinions, body as yours? Let me ask you this: Do you know, do you have any idea what she wanted? Do you have any idea what went wrong?

Do you have any idea how
you
went wrong?

If she were able to name something specific that was wrong with you—not enough money, say—would that help at all? Would that just be another way to keep you at a distance under pretense?

Do you think another man could offer her something you couldn’t? Did she think so? What would it be? Why didn’t you ask her? What were you afraid of? Have you ever asked her what she thinks about?

Have you ever asked her anything at all?

Why did you stop being nice to her?

When did you stop making love to her?

If it’s true that she knew you’d be stuck out of the country, don’t you find that disturbing? Is it possible she’d been planning this all along?

She could be lifting a dish, she could be soaping her hair, she could be riding the train, brewing a cup of tea, putting down a magazine, packaging up your belongings, folding clothing into a bag, fucking or following another man. What do you think she’s doing, if anything? What do you think she’s thinking about, if anything? What do you think she thought about when she followed Gray up the street, down to the train? Not you, certainly, but what? Does it bother you not to know?

Let’s say she’s walking toward Gray right now. Let’s say he’s with her. Let’s say he’s not in Central America at all.

How do you feel about that?

Did it actually surprise you to lose your job?

Did it actually surprise you that you cared?

Does it surprise you that you don’t care now?

Why are you
really
on this so-called search?

What happened to this Gray person?

What are you
really
going to do on this island?

Why did she want to get rid of you?

Why do you do nothing but think of her?

What do you think she’s doing right now?

My dearest wife,

It is beautiful here, all the water you could want—

He left his hotel room, closed the door on the airless carton, the cube of wood. The hotel was a line of knots in a block of board. He rocked on his heels. Weather vane, water, birds turning in air. Bluefields. It wasn’t impossible that she would come. She’d done less likely things. And she was due, he knew, vacation days.

He went down to the dock. He walked on sidewalks raised three feet off the ground, passed houses on stilts, canoes tied up like horses, as if he had arrived at the blue and green land of Noah and everybody knew just who wasn’t getting on that ark and it was them and they were ready. He stepped onto the dock, good hand in his pocket. Looked out to the ocean. How far is it anyway, this Corn Island?

Far.

A local woman sat on a little motorboat, a book of pictures in her lap.

How far?

Very. Too far to see. Too far to walk or swim.

How can I get there? Can I take a boat?

There’s no boat. A boat would take all day.

Would you take me in your boat?

Who knows when a boat will want to go that way. Not me and my boat.

How, then?

She didn’t answer. She bent back over her book, would only look at her pictures and ignore him, but then she sat up and said, Why not fly?

Is there even an airport here?

Yes, of course. Planes all over.

Except I have no money. Almost no money.

Thirty dollars American. Do you have that?

Thirty dollars only?

Myers couldn’t believe it. Myers had ninety-two dollars.

Do I need a passport? I have no passport.

Old Joe takes you over. He won’t ask much.

Well, why didn’t I fly in the first place?

How should I know? No one can know an ignorant mind.

My dearest wife,

On vacation, the scenes turn like pictures on pages—

At the airport in Bluefields, the planes came down like hail and flew up like pollen, spinning overhead, and everyone waited in line for them like for the bus. Myers waited in the small white room with all the other people who wanted to get one of those lifts.

Who’s going to Corn Island?

Only Myers raised his hand. Oh, and a few others. A man and a woman with suitcases and hats, a small child with a toy can on a string like a pet.

Fog river. Drizzle. An airstrip of cork and anchor. He boarded a plane made of tinfoil and paint, the size and dull shine of a kitchen appliance. He ducked into the low narrow shell. He fastened himself in and held on.

A vacation is simply, you know, to vacate. The vacationer leaves the home (leaves the mind), leaves the home empty (except for what he left behind (her)), that’s all.

No, no, that’s not a vacation, if you simply move to a different spot. That’s just looking at stuff, familiar stuff.

What’s so familiar about this? Myers would certainly like to know.

Claire

I was walking around my apartment. I was back from my trip.
I was opening kitchen cabinets and closing them. Food. That would be one element of my new life plan. I would eat like a regular person from now on. Also, location. I would move. What was I still doing here? I’d been sitting around this place all these years, thinking a ghost was going to show up and take care of me—maybe they’d all forgotten
I was here. But I could see now that nobody I knew was coming back for their stuff.

Things were going to be different now. I had new circuits in my head. Old switches were directing me to new lines. I’d get a job, I was thinking. Or an activity resembling one. I wouldn’t wait here all day until a decent hour to turn up at the bar.

Anything else while I’m at it?

Yep, I was going to go for a walk.

I picked up my bag and left the apartment.

I got on the F train. I wanted ocean spray and boardwalk. I was ready to face the sea air head on. The man who raised me used to take me there as a kid. We ate some pretty tasty things, trodding on those planks—cloud candy, stuffed nuts. I rode to the end of the line and got off at Coney Island.

Myers looked out at the plane’s shadow on the water. It was the tiniest plane he’d ever seen and meanwhile the water was an immensity, as if the land had gone, as if this little plane were the only piece left, the last shred of earth, this plaything, torn off and thrown out over the water while the rest of human feats sank below—or had never existed, as if this were the sole output of thousands of years of effort, this little craft, buzzing along without grace or beauty or reason or intent.

Anyway, this is no vacation.

It’s vacation enough. Colonial town. Beach. An afternoon in the hotel, writing postcards.

Myers has written no postcards.

Emails then.

The emails have been no vacation.

You get the idea.

The plane chugged on with its propeller of paper clip and glue. An awkward dart, flimsy and small. It seemed barely there between the sky and the sea. Hard to believe he would find earth at the other end, harder that he would find dancing and drinks and song. The plane flew so low that mist or cloud entered the cabin. Myers could see nothing, not his hand in front of his face. Even his thoughts numbed and faded.

The plane landed. Myers stepped down into an empty field. Nothing. Patches of dry grass, some scrappy bushes alongside the airstrip, a bit of tangled barbed wire. A three-wall hut served as the airport. The other people on the plane hadn’t gotten off, were getting off someplace else, or maybe they hadn’t gotten on at all.

He stood on the airstrip, picked up his briefcase. Walked out to the mud road. Fields all around, not a cat or a church in sight.

Is this Corn Island? he called, wavering, considering the serious lack of billboards, the serious lack of a serious road, as in pavement, as in cement, the serious lack of stores and people and wares. Hello? he called to the pilot, the only man in sight, who was leaning against the plane, reading from the middle of a thick book, his face under the lip of the plane. Which way is town? Myers called. The pilot raised his hand from the book and pointed down the road.

The road was rutted. Great pits had been torn out of it and thrown to the side. He stepped through the mud. Myers, the only tourist in the country who hadn’t known there would be no using leather briefcases, winter coats, suitcases with little wheels, forget it. And no wearing shoes like the kind Myers had on, the kind that belonged to a man in an office, the kind that ruined in mud, that stuck there and had to be sucked out, one by one. He tramped on.

Somehow a taxi had been dispatched and was bumping around the corner. It took a while to get to Myers because it had to sort of climb over the hills of clay and rise up out of the ditches. Myers waited for it to travel the hundred or so yards to him, until it finally arrived and stopped.

Downtown, please, said Myers.

Downtown? Where is that?

The business district.

Business?

Like for buying.

Buying what?

Take me to the tourist section. The place with the hotels and restaurants, the Internet cafés.

Oh, Internet. There is no Internet here.

No Internet?

No Internet? Then how could Gray have emailed…

This may have been the last moment Myers would entertain the notion of finding Gray, although truthfully his hope had already faded. There were plenty of people looking for Gray. They were trolling the earth with their questions and notepads.

And regarding the wife coming?

He got it already, all right? Don’t be sassy.

CLAIRE

I stepped out to the boardwalk. Was this Coney Island? Not the happy spot I recalled. It seemed small and huddled now. The planks were cracked. The shop awnings torn. Trash was piled up in places as if the trash men came only when paid. It didn’t matter. I felt tall and new. I felt mended among broken objects. I stayed on my feet and watched my step.

I stopped in at the freak show. It was in a very bad way. The tightrope walker fell. The impresario was gone, run away. The fire eater was a hysterical drunk and the magician was giving away her tricks for a buck. I left. A lingering dog followed me out. I kept going.