Vacation (6 page)

Thus Gray engaged himself through geometry.

He received a C in the class and for the next six years Gray had no thoughts of Myers. He finished one degree and began and finished another. He married the mintmouth girlfriend and settled down in Syracuse, though he’d never lived anyplace else. He shifted from the back of the room to the front, turned around, gathered papers instead of writing them, faced whichever direction he was pointed with the same dejection, went home and sat through her dejection, back and forth like that until nearly three years ago when he left, finally.

Before they split for good there was a lot of talk about resorts—not as in sunshine and sea, but as in “last resort”—and Gray and his wife tried them all: time apart, time together, compromise, birthday presents.

Those are normal, said Gray’s father on the phone, who was, after all, an informed man. You do those anyway.

Therapy too.

Normal.

It was like talking to a telemarketer.

Telemarketers are normal.

Yeah, she had her script all right.

She or the therapist?

Both. It was like talking to two telemarketers.

That’s normal.

So the marriage was over and both sides were banged up about it, but even more they seemed to have a small child from the thing, a girl. It had not yet been decided how that portion would divide up, what days would be his, how often he would see her, whether he would get a holiday and which, and Gray felt worse about that piece of it being broken off and floated away. It was something to try not to think
about. She was. His weanling, his springling, his sprout.

Myers. In Syracuse. The hotel called him a cab and he made it to the airport. He went in, confronted the place, its identical hallways, identical chairs, mirrored metal, the sort of place that inspires panic, requires spellbound acceptance. He had the fact of a suitcase to hold onto, and his other clutter, hat and so on, coats. He maneuvered around the right-angle objects placed in his path—counters, windows, walls. The floor speckled the floor.

So three years ago Gray and his wife split. Who wanted to leave whom had not been overly clear, and neither of them felt clear about any of it, except they agreed that clearly he needed another place to stay for a few months, until he could secure another place to stay for a few years, until he could secure another place to stay until death, at which time his placement would be another person’s problem—not that he meant to be neglectful on that score, don’t worry, he’d arrange some dark hole to crouch in.

It turned out there was a friend,
her
friend, a bachelor, who would rent Gray his extra bedroom in Brooklyn and could even set up a temporary office job for him, a low-level copyediting position at a press that specialized in brochures, alumni magazines, a line of children’s books meant for waiting rooms. Gray was qualified, and since he had been saying for years that he hated his job, hated Syracuse, loved the city, it seemed to make sense. So he went on a “professional leave” from his job and took a bus to New York.

(He arrived on the day of a February parade. Banners and streamers strung up and floating. The bus rolled under them. Freezing paraders clapped and held up their batons. Gray stared out the window, dazed, handfuls of confetti falling from the sky. He got off the bus and went for a walk.)

It seemed to make sense, that is, until he arrived and discovered the apartment occupied not only by the bachelor (he had had the image of two surly men keeping to themselves, deactivating the TV before bed) but also by the bachelor’s wife. Or not quite. She was almost a wife. She was nearly, approaching, had promised to be the bachelor’s wife, and she took up a lot of space with her helpful storage tips and her cheery switchboard voice and her drip-drys in the bathroom.

So that’s how it happened: Gray installed temporarily in a spare room with a temporary office undertaking. Gray upset about one thing (receding child) and the bachelor glad about another (impending wife).

Myers got on an airplane, an entire structure of steel coated in plastic, artificial air, stalls and slots for jamming belongings or sliding oneself into, all of it cheap and partly broken, tacked down with childproof levers.

He seated himself on the aisle. Departed along with the rest. They were all strapped down and inventoried. There was something very old in the seat next to him—man, woman, rock, he couldn’t settle on what. He scanned the paper (Coney Island crime, high winds in the South, war). He got ready to arrive in a country he’d barely heard of, to a language he barely spoke (he’d had the college Spanish, yes, but he’d never expected to actually use it), to an unknown climate among other unknowns—because of course he was going to Nicaragua. Did you think he was going to go this far and give up? When he could go much, much farther, throw himself out of the country, embark on some dismal folkloric chase?

The stewards asked that everyone keep track of all the trash they carried. Not only the pieces in the overhead bins but the ones beneath the seat in front of them. The bottom ones for floatation. The ones upright and locked. The ones in the liftoff and landing.

Gray,

Maybe I’ll come see this beautiful Nicaragua! In fact, I’m here. Yes,
I slid down your upstate slope. I arrived in the capital just tonight. Want some company? Tell me where you are. I’m ready for a good time.

He added:
And one more thing.

I need to ask you a question about my wife.

Gray hadn’t felt comfortable living with the bachelor and the girlfriend. He tried to keep out of the way as much as possible, went for long walks, arrived at the apartment long after dinner, shut himself in his room like a teen.

And the editing job was unbearable. Not so awful, really—a mish-mash of syntax, comma misplacements, general misspeak, errors of the inverbal, the lobotomized. He’d rather do anything else, anything. And he’d rather stay anyplace else as well. But Gray knew nothing about how to find a job or an apartment in the city and didn’t know who to ask. He walked from one end of the island to the other, clammy with despair.

One day he found an edition of his own school’s alumni magazine in the sample rack. They had a contract with his current employer. He read through it and stopped on an item about Myers. Myers had completed a layout and design certificate, had moved to Brooklyn.

Gray raised his head. Myers.

Found him in the book, phoned, got no answer. He tried each night for four nights running. He barely knew the guy but it wasn’t as if he had a whole lot of other choices. He gave up finally. What would he say, anyway?

It was the last time Gray had thought about Myers until now.

Gray had suffered in the bachelor’s household for four and a half months and in this time the bachelor’s girlfriend became his wife and then she said it: Why did she have to share her home with a man who was not only not her husband but was incapable of simple dexterous behaviors like folding and flushing? Here she was, a newlywed, and look what she had to put up with, and just as she was getting ready to do something about it, he left. Disappeared without saying goodbye, left his few items of clothing and books behind for her to bag up and trash. Rather rude.

Anyone watching would have noticed his name back in the course listings that fall semester and Gray back in his comp slot, and as a matter of fact, there was someone watching.

My dearest husband,

I am glad you did not drop out of the sky and into Nicaragua like a dead bird, that you chose a form of air transportation that requires supervision and accompaniment. Things are very hectic at work, to say nothing of the rest of the city. Take good care. Do not feel you have to post reports. Enjoy.

Your wife

Three arrivals and an immigration line later, Myers stepped out into the heat of the Nicaraguan night—a pandemonium of taxis, hotcake air. A hotel arm led him to a car. He rode through the night, made it up the steps. Signed the paper presented to him, allowed his belongings to be carried off.

He walked the length of the lobby, found the computer cubicles, bought a guidebook in the gift shop, sat down and went over his faults. No, he looked at something, anything other than himself. The four windows in front of him, the two desks to the side. The people coming through, walking by, going into elevators, ascending to higher floors, as if it required no effort, no sound, no remorse. A smooth lift straight up into the lighted dome. He himself rode the elevator to the mezzanine, looked over the handrail. Came back down.

He would not have to go far to see the Nicaraguan wonders around him, his guidebook informed him. There was a
live, smoking volcano
right on the outskirts of town that anyone could visit and witness, no special permits necessary and no volcanic equipment either because it wasn’t going to explode in anyone’s face and lots of people lived all around it and walked over it every day and planted their corn on it and they didn’t have to wear any special hats or protective goggles. And on top of having a
live, smoking volcano
, they had earthquakes too, and everybody had to hold on to their hats or they could topple over like plastic army men and you didn’t see them complaining. To witness this special volcanic event all one had to do was take a bus or a taxi, ride up the volcanic slant, observe the billows of smoke that rise from the pit of the earth, have one’s moment of fear or awe or existential crisis in the face of this bit of torn-up planet, then get back in the transport and return to the hotel. This is a fine adventure and many others are available as well but one has to choose, one always must.

And a few blocks from where his feet now rested was Nicaragua’s very own indoor, climate-controlled shopping mall, built in the happy tradition of Victor Gruen, a confirmation of Nicaragua’s social and aesthetic alignment with the modern. The guidebook had an impressive list of items Myers could purchase and take back to his country, and had a photograph of the escalator he could ride and of the food court he’d reach at the top. He could see it for himself if he followed the little map over the sidewalks and through the labyrinth of traffic. Who knew what awaited him on the other side of the street if he’d only step across? And there’s no sense in acting like a snob about it, acting like you’re going to come all the way here and not want to shop, no sense in that, because everyone knows that everyone wants to shop no matter where you’re from or who you are, everyone wants to, everyone. What else did you come all the way here for, if not to seize and take back what you also have at home?

Myers,

Regional manager here. I don’t believe we’ve come to a good understanding about the phone call that took place between us. I believe something went wrong between my voice and your ears, between your mouth and my phone, between my words and your deeds, between the wires, Myers, between one hotel and another, between one thought and the next. I’m talking about you. Your thoughts, your feet. They did not, I notice, bring you and your laptop back here. You’ve got until tomorrow. I’m shoving your desk over a cliff in the morning. I’ll watch it smash on the rocks below.

The country also featured any number of “volunteers” at any given time. These volunteers, not unlike Santa’s elves, hailed from Myers’s very own country as well as from helpful guilt-ridden European ones, such as Germany. He could observe these volunteers in a wild-habitat location and witness their good works for himself. The country was stuffed with these people, frankly, so much so that sometimes they couldn’t quite fit and had to be tied together with bamboo rope and sent home on a raft. But this year the country had just the right amount of volunteers and you could glimpse them from several vantage points, taking a break from their labors of latrine digging and stair building or from making their solemn advisements in regards to matters of business, religion, childcare, gardening, and diplomacy. The Nicaraguans are careful with them. They don’t burn the volunteers by leaving them out too long in the sun or drown them by throwing them into the sea. They don’t place them under a mango tree, because a piece of fruit could fall on their heads and knock them over. They don’t lock the volunteers out in the rain or accidentally run them over with their trucks. They feed them every day and encourage them to propagate among themselves. The Nicaraguans don’t say things like, What do you think, that we can’t perfectly well dig our own toilets? Get out of the way, would you? Go build your stairs over there where no one will trip on them, for Pete’s sake. They never say that. Because it’s not easy out there for the volunteers with only their little sewing machines and toy shovels to work with. Besides, it’s nice to have them around. It’s a lot better than getting exploded by hundred-pound bombs. It’s a lot better than getting smeared into vapors in the air.