Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth Read Free Book Online Page B

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