Vacation

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  We follow him through a white bright corridor into the plane, but honestly, we’d follow him off a bridge. I take my proverbial seat next to Krow. Yeah, she calls herself Krow now.

  Before the silence flips that switch to awkwardness, she says, “So, Mr. Johnson, what’ve you been up to?”

  “Work, mostly. I write lesson plans.”

  “You don’t teach anymore?”

  “I teach teachers. But no, not in the traditional sense.”

  “I see.” She says this without a hint of satisfaction, and I don’t want to acknowledge the disappointment buzzing through my skull.

  I ask what she does for a living.

  “I make perfume. Not the bottles. The smells. Here.” She puts her wrist an inch from my nose and let’s me sniff.

  I do and I smell grapes. “It’s nice.”

  “It’s called Undone.” After a moment, she holds out a tiny bag. “You want my peanuts?”

  “What?” I ask, as if I don’t understand the question.

  “I’m not a big fan of nuts.”

  I’m frozen.

  “That was a joke, Mr. Johnson. You can laugh.” She does, and tosses me the peanuts.

  My gut tells me that by now I should’ve said, “You can call me Bernard,” but the opportunity passes, so I don’t. Instead, I eat the nuts.

  One of them’s too crunchy and leaves in its wake a horrible tang on my tongue, but it’s too late. That’s the problem with bad aftertastes. By the time you know you’re in trouble, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Except, of course, get over it.

  I do.

  I pretend to sleep because Krow’s still awake.

  And I don’t think about everything I’ve left behind. My job, my girlfriend, my house, my gold. If I can forget all of this so easily, then why is it my life to begin with?

  No, I think about the Jennings.

  No, you don’t know them. They’re one of the many families whose ex-houses I cleansed for Aunt Janet before I got my teaching credential.

  The Jennings don’t pay their rent for two months, and I’m there on eviction day, moving out everything they’ve left behind. And they’ve left everything. Like usual.

  I invade their now lifeless living space. I load the boxes. With a snow shovel, I scoop up the wrappers and diapers and rotten food and cat shit and cigarettes and unopened bills and spilled milk (and yeah, I don’t cry) off the floor, and put it in plastic bags, and load it with the rest of the stuff. I don’t throw away the trash. I can’t. Legally, Aunt Janet has to store everything for two weeks so that the Jennings can take back their belongings. If they pay the storage fee. They won’t.

  These are the Jennings’ computers and stereos and TVs, and none of it works, but the Jennings don’t give a shit. They don’t give a shit because this is a façade, and not the kind you show to the world. No. This is a simulation created by the Jennings for the Jennings.

  Ordinary people own ordinary things. The Jennings own ordinary things.

  Ordinary people have pets. The Jennings have pets.

  But once the Jennings are kicked out, they leave their things and their pets behind, because they don’t give a fuck about their things and their pets, because all of their fuck is reserved for their drugs. Despite this seemingly important fact, the Jennings care enough about being normal to build a broken stinking shitty stage of a world around them. And they’ll keep building it, wherever they are, whoever they are, because the Jennings aren’t just one family in one home in one town.

  “I’m finished,” I tell Aunt Janet on the phone, so that she can punch the clock.

  But I’m not finished. Before locking up, I spend a few minutes petting the cats. I don’t call animal control. This is a city of cats and they don’t stand a chance in lockup. No, after I finish maybe the last petting of their lives, I’ll carry them outside and lock them out of their home-stinking-home.

  And say goodbye.

  One summer I start reading like Quixote on crack. That very same summer, Mrs. Royal, the hottest librarian in the known universe(s)—sorry, mom, I’m not sure how many you and your scientist friends know about—starts working at the public library. Not a coincidence. And maybe, just maybe, this sort of thing happens all the time. Maybe the future Olympian overhears one day that his secret love thinks swimmers are sexy. Or the future Guinness World Record holder for Farthest Spaghetti Nasal Ejection eats at an Italian restaurant under a busted heating vent and sneezes. Or a grandmother buys a box of medical textbooks at a garage sale because they’re “so cheap and in mint condition” as she explains to her bemused son, and gives them to her granddaughter, the future doctor, on her sixth birthday. Or the very horny future English teacher meets a woman with a low-cut shirt and well-formed breasts and an unhappy marriage and a need for attention.

  And this is her library. When I’m inside, I’m inside her.

  And these are her favorite books. When I’m reading them, I’m reading her.

  Touching her. Opening her and closing her.

  The novel is nothing but a thick line between our two minds.

  It’s a love spell, written in code.

  We talk about her favorite books—now our favorite books—and I feel almost like a man.

  There’s a reason intercourse refers to both the act of making love and conversation.

  But the library’s empty now, and Mrs. Royal isn’t queen here anymore. In her place, I find the ugliest, fattest, most annoying woman in the Universe(s). She bites her nails like my college roommate, the grit under those nails leaving streaks of brown on her yellow teeth. She can’t stop moving—tapping her fingers or bouncing her leg or swiveling her chair or rolling her neck. And every few seconds she sniffs at nothing like Uncle Steve, like her nose is a ticking time bomb you wish would go off.

  She smells like raisins.

  And when she speaks. God, when she speaks. “Like, um, can you hear me alright? Am I getting through to you?”

  “I can hear you just fine,” I say, and I’m starting to wonder what I’m doing in an empty library.

  She smiles. “That’s great, Berny.”

  And now I’m wondering why this woman is my sister. And why she’s alive. “Aubrey, what are you doing here?”

  “Aubrey, huh? That’s, um, the name of your sister. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Am I dreaming?”

  “You’re not awake.” She picks at her teeth with a pencil, adding to the mosaic already in her mouth. “It’s an interesting choice, your sister. I can only imagine how, like, ugly I am right now.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She laughs like one of the Jennings’ thrown out dolls would laugh. “You’ve never, like, met your sister before. So I’m obviously gonna be the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen, because, men have a difficult time desexualizing a beautiful woman that they’ve never met. Subconsciously especially. Therefore, unless there’s some incestuous stuff going on, I’ve gotta be, like, a troll or something. Am I right, bro?”

  Part 3

  After they crown the topless Queen, and race banana tree trunks down the hillside wearing nothing but body paint and a loin cloth, and parade for us, and dance for us in traditional Polynesian hula skirts, then we all—Rapanui and Tourist alike—head into the gymnasium for the not-so-traditional disco party. Most of the island women wear coconut bras. Some let their own coconuts hang out. And here I am, alone in the corner.

  Until Jack saves me. “You alright, Bernard?” He lends his hand to my shoulder. “Missing somebody back home?”

  “It’s not that. I’ve been having these…what do you call them…those very detailed dreams.”

  “Lucid?”

  “I’ve never had them before. Or I have and couldn’t remember them.”

  You’ll tell Jack anything, but god forbid that you learn any of his deep dark secrets. Or even that he has any.

  “That’s normal,” Jack says. “I don’t know what it is—the change in altitude,
the jet lag, some other factor. We’re all affected by travel in one way or another. For people like you, it’s dreams. For me, explosive diarrhea. Consider yourself lucky.”

  I grin, and Jack reenters the mass of bouncing flesh. At that exact moment, as if the crowd can’t accept Jack without sacrificing another, Krow materializes at my side.

  “You should dance, Mr. Johnson,” she says. “The Rapanui know how to party. And usually I hate disco.”

  Bernard. My name is Bernard. But I say, “I’m enjoying the free drinks.” I raise my cup and jiggle it as if to emphasize its existence.

  “Good. As long as you’re enjoying yourself.” She lets her back slide down the wall, little by little, but keeps her legs straight as her sandals slide forward. After a few seconds of this, she’s almost sitting, but there’s no chair, and she doesn’t fall. “These Rapanui women. They’re amazing, aren’t they? They’re not afraid of going topless. They don’t wear makeup. Seeing women like this, that’s why I’m here.”

  I face her. She smells like plums about to burst.

  “I mean, on the inside I’ve always been a woman. Always. But after my surgeries…” She sighs, maybe in disappointment. “I felt so insecure. Are my breasts breast-like enough? Is my labia labia-like enough? But once I allowed myself to fully immerse into the female world, I was reminded that I’m not the only one asking these questions. Women who are born women, they’re just as insecure. They have these outrageous paradigms of beauty. So I promised myself that I’m not going to live like that. Or think like that. And that’s why I’m here, really. On Vacation. To experience, firsthand, everything that beauty and femininity can entail, so that I can eradicate their paradigms and make my own. Reinvent myself. Does that make any sense?”

  Yeah, Krow’s shocked me, like sinking in a puddle would shock me. You expect depth, but not this much depth.

  I nod, but she isn’t looking at me, so I say, “Yeah.”

  And I’m reminded of what my sister talked about the night before. After I passed out in my motel room, she said, “Easter Island is, like, the perfect name for this place. What with the whole resurrection thing and all. This whole island has been totally revamped over and over again. Once upon a time, the Rapanui tribes overpopulated the island and used up too many resources and, like, killed all their trees for agriculture and for moving those cool statues. So, of course, they started killing each other. Eating each other. That’s what people do in these situations. So that sucked, but they calmed down and bounced back. After that, well, like usual, civilization had to go and rape their culture. That’s what civilizations do. So the Rapanui were enslaved and diseased and their population dropped down to about a hundred or something. But they bounced back again. Oh, and they had a tsunami to deal with in 1960. But they survived. The statues were glued back together and set back in place. Like I said, resurrection.”

  And that day, before the disco party, the Tour Group explores the island. We find fifteen maoi standing in a row, some wearing cake hats Jack calls topknots, and some letting their bald flat heads bake in the sun. All fifteen maoi stare at a single toppled maoi some yards in front of them. This fallen maoi, he’s lying on his back, staring wide-eyed right at the sun. The Fifteen might be mourning him.

  Or maybe, just maybe, he’s not dead. Maybe he’s refusing to stand, and the Fifteen are pissed.

  But what the fuck can they do about it?

  They’re fucking statues.

  And maybe the town of Hanga Roa where all the people live is lush and green, but the rest of the island, where the maoi live, it’s barren.

  The trees are gone.

  The land is dead.

  And I’m thinking about last night, when my sister, who smelled like prunes, said, “The thing about resurrection is, the problem is, you can never, like, bring it all back. Try to bring back a human, and you get a zombie. Bring back Jesus, and he can’t perform miracles anymore. The point is, bro, you always lose something. And maybe that’s a good thing. And maybe it’s not. But, like, as a human being, you should always try to find out what you’re missing. Otherwise, you might find yourself empty, and you won’t know why.”

  With an eyedropper, Krow drips the clear liquid on my bloody knuckles, where Pumpkin Head’s teeth encountered my fist. Beforehand, Krow doesn’t say, “This might sting a little,” because, when the liquid touches me, it doesn’t sting at all.

  “Lavender,” Krow says.

  I look up from my hands.

  “That’s what this is,” she says. “Back in the 1930’s, I don’t know the exact year, a French chemist named Rene Maurice Gattefosse. I’m probably not saying his name right. Well, he burned his hand and stuck it into the fluid closest to him, which happened to be a bowl of lavender oil. It healed him fast, and there wasn’t any scarring.”

  “Interesting.”

  She screws the eyedropper, which also acts as a lid, back onto the tiny vial. She adds this vial to her velvety box of vials, and slides it under her bed, between her feet.

  “Thanks for helping out back there, by the way.” She says this like I paid for her meal after she discovered she forgot her wallet. Purse.

  The moments play in my head, over and over, like a broken record that’s stuttering your favorite part of your favorite song, so you leave it on for a while. Honestly, I’m not aiming for his mouth. But I’m drunk, and I’m no fighter. Pumpkin Head falls back, the way a tipped cow might, or a maoi statue in a tsunami. I imagine his pumpkin head cracking open on the road, spilling out all the gooey orange seediness. Luckily, that part doesn’t happen.

  “I know it seems like that guy was after me,” Krow says. “But the truth is, he was after you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I smelled him. He may have grabbed my breasts, but he wasn’t horny. He was looking for a fight.”

  “Really.”

  “It happens in bars all the time. Some guy wants the crap beat out of him, so he acts like an asshole. Feeling guilty about something. Hence the macho penitence.”

  Thanks to him, I feel a little courageous. Tomorrow when he apologizes, I even feel a little respected.

  “And you can really tell all that by sniffing the guy?” I say.

  “You could too, after a couple intramuscular shots of Vitamin A. After that, you’re a bloodhound. Or at least a woman. Women can smell circles around men. Humans, I’m talking about now.”

  “I figured.”

  She crosses her legs. Her knees hang off the side of the bed, and I’m afraid she’s going to fall forward, but she doesn’t. Instead, she says, “So, you want me to do a reading?”

  “Reading?”

  “Let me sniff your armpit and I’ll tell you your future.”

  “So you’re some kind of smell psychic, is that it?”

  She grins. “Okay, I can’t tell you your future, but I can tell you what you’re feeling. What you’re thinking about. What you need.”

  “Right,” I say, or maybe I just make a face that says it.

  “It’s not so strange, you know. You realize, there isn’t a single thing in the world that gives off a smell. Things give off molecules that our minds interpret as smells. So why not analyze these interpretations?”

  I raise my arm in defeat.

  She leans in close, where her nose tickles my oasis of hairs. She smells like flowers, and she smells me, with a deep, slow breath. Afterward, she doesn’t vomit or even cough, the way I would.

  “Well?”

  Her eyes closed, she keep breathing careful, as if meditating. Maybe she is. Without opening her eyes, she says, “You smell…normal. Mostly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She shrugs and her eyelids split. “Most guys I’ve smelled smell the way you do. But there is something else. It’s faint.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. It’s something I’ve never smelled before. I don’t want to alarm you, but, the smell, it’s unnatural. If you’re sick, it’s no sickn
ess I’ve ever smelled.”

  “Are you messing with me?”

  “I’m not, but.” She shakes her head, black hairs sweeping her face, though it’s already clean. “Forget about it. It’s just a smell.”

  I know she doesn’t mean that. Scent is her occupation. Her expertise. Her life. But I say, “Yeah.”

  On the way back to my room, I picture a dictionary in Mrs. Royal’s library, and on page 728, between Johnsonian and Johnson noise, there it is in bold black letters: Johnsonitis. And maybe by the time that dictionary goes public, I’m already dead. I’m buried in my oversized tailor-made coffin, because my head’s mutated and looks like a maoi. I don’t decompose the way dead bodies should, because no maggots or bacteria or any living thing will touch me. They know to stay away, because of my smell. It turns out, the archaeologists, in their child-in-a-sandbox glee, dug up an airborne virus that only holds disco parties in certain people, like the rare Bernard Johnson.

  But there’s no way the abnormal stench emanating from my pits means that I’m unique. Once my body slithers under the covers of my tight motel bed, my automated hand pecks at the pill bottle on the nightstand. I’m not special. I’m a diseased human animal like any other. Diagnosed with depression. Lost in routine.

  Empty.

  And maybe, just maybe, we don’t want to know why.

  Part 4

  We’re sitting across from each other at the little kid table, me in a carved-out-apple of chair, her, an orange.

  “You looked it all up, right?” Aubrey says. “Everything I told you about Easter Island and the Rapanui and everything, you looked it up?”

  “I asked Jack,” I say.

  “And?”

  “It checks out.”

  She smiles, and unlike most people, the act doesn’t make her look any prettier. “I’m totally curious. How exactly are you rationalizing this whole you-me experience?”

  I shrug. “At some point I must’ve read everything that you told me.”

  “Interesting theory.” She pops a zit on her cheek and the missile lands on mine. “But it’s a stupid one and you know it. You feel it.”