People We Meet on Vacation

IFIND A TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR pharmacy in Palm Springs and drive toward it through the first soft rays of sunrise. Afterward, I get back to the apartment before most other stores have opened. By then the parking lot of the Desert Rose has started to bake again, and the cool hours of predawn shrink to a distant memory as I climb the steps, loaded with grocery bags.

“How are you doing?” I ask Alex as I shut the door behind me.

“Better.” He forces a smile. “Thanks.”

Liar. His pain is written all over his face. He’s worse at hiding that than his emotions. I put the two ice packs I bought into the freezer, then go to the bed and plug in the heating pad. “Lean forward,” I say, and Alex shifts enough for me to slide the pad down the stack of pillows where it can sit across his midback. I touch his shoulder, helping to slow his descent as he leans back. His skin is so warm. I’m sure the heating pad won’t be comfortable, but hopefully it will do the trick, warming the muscle until it relaxes.

In half an hour, we’ll switch to the ice pack to try to bring down any inflammation.

I may have read up on back spasms in the quiet, fluorescent-lit aisles of the drugstore.

“I’ve got some Icy Hot too,” I say. “Does that ever help?”

“Maybe,” he says.

“Well, it’s worth a try. I guess I should’ve thought of that before you leaned back and got comfortable again.”

“It’s fine,” he says, wincing. “I never really get comfortable when this happens. I just sort of wait for the medicine to knock me out, and by the time I wake up, I usually feel a lot better.”

I slide off the edge of the bed and gather the rest of the bags, carrying them back to him. “How long does it last?”

“Usually just a day if I stay still,” he says. “I’ll have to be careful tomorrow, but I’ll be able to move around. You should go do something you know I’d hate.” He forces another smile.

I ignore the comment and search through the bag until I find the Icy Hot. “Need help leaning forward again?”

“No, I’m good.” But the face he makes suggests otherwise, so I shift beside him, take his shoulders in my hands, and slowly help him ease upright.

“I feel like you’re my nurse right now,” he says bitterly.

“Like, in a hot and sexy way?” I say, trying to lighten his mood.

“In a sad-old-man-who-can’t-take-care-of-himself way,” he says.

“You own a house,” I say. “I bet you even ripped the carpet out of the bathroom.”

“I did,” he agrees.

“Clearly you can take care of yourself,” I say. “I can’t even keep a houseplant alive.”

“That’s because you’re never home,” he says.

I twist the top off the Icy Hot and get a glob onto my fingers. “I don’t think so. I got these hardy things, pothos and ZZ plants and snake plants—they’re, like, the kinds of plants they stick in lightless malls for months at a time and they still don’t die. Then they move into my apartment and immediately give up on life.” I steady his rib cage with one hand so I don’t jostle him too much and, with my other, reach around to carefully massage the cream onto his back.

“Is that the right place?” I ask.

“A little higher and to the left. My left.”

“Here?” I look up at him, and he nods. I tear my gaze away and focus on his back, my fingers turning gentle circles over the spot.

“I hate that you have to do this,” he says, and my eyes wander back to his, which are low and serious beneath a furrowed brow.

My heart feels like it drops through my chest and soars back up. “Alex, has it ever occurred to you that I might like taking care of you?” I say. “I mean, obviously I don’t love that you’re in pain, and I hate that I let you sleep in that abominable chair, but if someone’s going to have to be your nurse, I’m honored it’s me.”

His mouth presses closed, and neither of us says anything for a few moments.

I pull my hands away from him. “Hungry?”

“I’m okay,” he says.

“Well, that’s too bad.” I go to the kitchen and rinse the leftover Icy Hot off my hands, grab a couple of glasses, and fill them with ice, then return to the bed and arrange the remaining grocery bags in a row. “Because . . .” I pull out a box of donuts with a flourish, like a magician producing a bunny from a hat. Alex looks dubious.

He isn’t a big sugar person. I think that’s partly why he smells so good, like even the obsessive cleanliness aside, his breath and body odor are always just sort of good and I’m guessing it’s because he does not eat like a ten-year-old. Or a Wright.

“And for you,” I say, and dump out the yogurt cups, box of granola, and berry mix, along with a bottle of cold-brew. The apartment’s way too hot for drip coffee.

“Wow,” he says, grinning. “You’re a real hero.”

“I know,” I say. “I mean, thank you.”

We sit and feast, picnic-style, on the bed. I eat mostly donuts and a few bites of Alex’s yogurt. He eats mostly yogurt but also devours half of a strawberry donut. “I never eat this stuff,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

“It’s pretty good,” he says.

“It speaks to me,” I say, but if he catches the reference to that very first trip we took together, he ignores it, and my heart sinks.

It’s possible that all those little moments that meant so much to me never meant quite the same thing to him. It’s possible that he didn’t reach out to me for two full years because, when we stopped speaking, he didn’t lose something precious the way that I did.

We have five more days of this trip, counting today—though today and tomorrow are our last wedding-event-free days—and right now I dread something bigger than awkwardness.

I think about heartbreak. The full-fledged version of this thing I’m feeling right now, but sprawling out for days on end with no relief or escape. Five days of pretending to feel fine, while inside me something is tearing into smaller and smaller pieces until it’s nothing but scraps.

Alex sets his cold brew on the side table and looks at me. “You really should go out.”

“I don’t want to,” I say.

“Of course you want to,” he says. “This is your trip, Poppy. And I know you haven’t gotten everything you need for your article.”

“The article can wait.”

His head cocks uncertainly. “Please, Poppy,” he says. “I’ll feel terrible if you’re stuck inside with me all day.”

I want to tell him I’ll feel terrible if I leave. I want to say, All I wanted for this trip was to be anywhere with you all day or Who cares about seeing Palm Springs when it’s one hundred degrees out or I love you so much it sometimes hurts. Instead I say, “Okay.”

Then I get up and go to the bathroom to get ready. Before I go, I bring Alex an ice pack and swap out the heating pad. “Are you going to be able to do this on your own?” I ask.

“I’m just gonna sleep when you leave,” he says. “I’ll be fine without you, Poppy.”

This is the last thing I want to hear.

•   •   •

NO OFFENSE TO the Palm Springs Art Museum, but I just don’t really care. Maybe I could under different circumstances, but under these circumstances, it is clear to me and everyone working here that I’m just killing time. I’ve never really known how to look at art without someone else there to be my guidepost.

My first boyfriend, Julian, used to say, You either feel something or you don’t, but he was never taking me to MoMA or the Met (when we took the overnight bus to New York we skipped those entirely) or even the Cincinnati Art Museum; he was taking me to DIY galleries where artists would lie naked on the floor with their crotches tarred-and-feathered while recordings of audio from the P.F. Chang’s dining room played at full volume.

It was easier to “feel something” in those contexts. Embarrassment, revulsion, anxiety, amusement. There was so much you could feel from something that over-the-top, and the smallest details could tip you one way or another.

But most visual art doesn’t trigger a visceral reaction in me, and I’m never sure how long I’m supposed to stand in front of a painting, or what face I’m supposed to make, or how to know if I’ve chosen the dullest one from the lot and all the docents are silently judging me.

I’m fairly sure I’m not spending the appropriate amount of time gazing meaningfully at the art here, because I’m finished walking through in less than an hour. All I want to do is go back to the apartment, but not if Alex specifically wants me not to.

So I do a second lap. And then a third. This time I read all the placards. I pick up the literature at the front reception area and take it with me so I have something else to study intensely. A balding docent with paper-thin skin gives me the evil eye.

He probably thinks I’m casing the joint. For all the time I’ve spent in here, I might as well have been. Two birds, one stone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Finally, I accept that I’ve worn out my welcome, and I head to Palm Canyon Drive, where there’s supposed to be some amazing antiques shopping.

And there is. Galleries and showrooms and antiques stores all lined up in a neat row, sprinkled with bright pops of midcentury modernist colors—robin’s-egg blues, brilliant oranges, and sour greens, vibrant mustardy yellow lamps that look almost illustrated and Sputnik-patterned couches and elaborate metal light fixtures with spokes sticking out in every direction.

It’s like I’m on vacation in the 1960s’ image of the future.

It’s enough to hold my interest for all of twenty minutes.

Then I finally bite the bullet and call Rachel.

“Helloooooooo,” she cries on the second ring.

“Are you drunk?” I ask, surprised.

“No?” she says. “Are you?”

“I wish.”

“Uh-oh,” she says. “I thought you weren’t texting me back because you were having an amazing time!”

“I’m not texting you back because we’re staying in a four-foot shoebox that’s a trillion degrees and I have neither the space nor mental fortitude to send you a detailed message about how bad it’s going.”

“Oh, darling,” Rachel sighs. “Do you want to come home?”

“I can’t,” I say. “There’s a wedding at the end of this, remember?”

“You could,” she says. “I could have an ‘emergency.’”

“No, that’s okay,” I say. I don’t want to go home—I just want things to go better.

“Bet you’re wishing you were in Santorini right now,” she says.

“Mostly I just wish Alex weren’t laid up back in the room with a back spasm.”

“What?” Rachel says. “Young, fit, rockin’-bod Alex?”

“The very same. And he won’t let me do anything to help him, really. He kicked me out and I went to the art museum, like, four times already today.”

“Four . . . times?” she says.

“I mean,” I say, “I didn’t, like, leave and come back. I just feel like I took four full-length seventh-grade field trips in a row. Ask me anything about Edward Ruscha.”

“Oh!” Rachel says. “What was his pseudonym when he was working at Artforum magazine in layout?”

“Okay, don’t ask me anything,” I say. “Turns out I did not actually read the pamphlet I was staring at that whole time.”

“Eddie Russia,” Art School Rachel blurts out. “Don’t at all remember why. I mean, obviously it just sounds like his name, but why not use your real name in that case, you know?”

“Totally,” I agree, starting back to the car. There’s sweat gathering at my armpits and in the backs of my knees, and I feel like I’m getting a sunburn even standing under the awning of this coffee shop. “Should I start writing under the name Pop Right, without the W?”

“Or become a DJ in the nineties,” Rachel says flatly. “DJ Pop-Right.”

“Anyway,” I say. “How are you? How’s New York? How are the pooches?”

“Good,” she says, “hot, and okay. Otis had a minor surgery this morning. Tumor removal—benign, thank God. I’m on my way to pick him up now.”

“Give him kisses for me.”

“Obviously,” she says. “I’m almost to the vet, so I should go, but let me know if you need me to get injured or whatever so you can come home early.”

I sigh. “Thanks. And you let me know if you need any expensive mod furniture.”

“Um. Sure.”

We hang up, and I check the time. I’ve successfully made it to four thirty p.m. I think that means it’s appropriately late to pick up sandwiches and head back to the Desert Rose.

When I get inside, the balcony door is shut against the heat of the day, but the apartment is still nastily hot. Alex has put a gray T-shirt back on and is sitting up where I left him with his book open and two more sitting on the mattress beside him.

“Hey,” he says. “Have a good time?”

“Yep,” I lie. I tip my chin toward the door. “You’ve been up and walking around.”

His mouth twists into a guilty frown. “Just a little bit. I had to pee anyway, and take another pill.”

I climb onto the bed and set the bag of sandwiches between us, pulling my legs underneath me. “How do you feel?”

“A lot better,” he says. “I mean, I’m still trapped here, but it hurts less.”

“Good. I brought you a sandwich.” I tip the plastic bag upside down and the paper-wrapped sandwich slides out of it.

He takes his and slightly smiles as he unwraps it. “A Reuben?”

“I know it’s not the same thing as stealing it from Delallo,” I say. “But if you want, I’ll put it in the fridge and go to the bathroom long enough for you to hobble over and take it.”

“That’s okay,” he says. “In my heart, it’s stolen from Delallo, and some would say that’s what really matters.”

“We’re learning so many important lessons on this trip,” I say. “P.S., I left Nikolai a voicemail on my way home about the air situation. Pretty sure he’s screening my calls.”

“Oh!” Alex says, brightening. “I forgot to tell you! I got it down to seventy-eight.”

“Seriously?” I spring off the bed and go check. “That’s amazing, Alex!”

He laughs. “This is a pathetic thing to celebrate.”

“The theme of this trip is Taking What We Can Get,” I say as I sit back down beside him.

“I thought it was Aspire,” Alex says.

“Aspire to reach seventy-five degrees.”

“Aspire to fit inside the swimming pool at some point.”

“Aspire to get away with the murder of Nikolai.”

“Aspire to get out of bed.”

“You poooooor thing,” I moan. “Trapped in bed with a book—your personal hell!—while I rub menthol on your back and hand deliver you your ideal breakfast and lunch.”

Alex makes the puppy face.

“Unfair!” I say. “You know I can’t use self-defense against you right now!”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll stop until you’re comfortable causing me bodily harm again.”

“When did this start happening?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess a couple months after Croatia?”

The word lands like a firework in the middle of my chest. I try to keep my face placid but have no idea how I’m faring. He, for his part, shows no sign of discomfort. “Do you know why?” I recover.

“I hunch a lot?” he says. “Especially when I’m reading or on my computer. A massage therapist told me my hip muscles were probably shortening, pulling on my back. I don’t know. My doctor just prescribed me muscle relaxants, then left before I could think of any questions.”

“And it happens a lot?” I say.

“Not a lot,” he says. “This is the fourth or fifth time. It happens less when I’m exercising regularly. I guess sitting on the plane and in the car and all that . . . and then the chair bed.”

“Makes sense.”

After a moment, he asks, “You okay?”

“I guess I just . . .” I trail off, unsure how much I want to say. “I feel like I missed a lot.”

His head tilts back against the pillows, and his eyes wander down my face. “Me too.”

A half-hearted laugh rises out of me. “No, you didn’t. My life’s exactly the same.”

“That’s not true,” he says. “You cut your hair.”

This time, the laugh is more genuine, and a contained smile curves over Alex’s lips. “Yeah, well,” I say, fighting a blush as I feel his gaze move over my bare shoulder, down the length of my arm to where my hand rests on the bed near his knee. “I didn’t get a house or buy my own dishwasher or anything. I doubt I’ll ever be able to.”

His eyebrow arches, and his eyes retrain on my face. “You don’t want to,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I say, but honestly I’m unsure. That’s the problem. I haven’t wanted the things I used to want, the things I wanted when I made just about every big life decision I’ve made. I’m still paying off student loans for a degree I didn’t finish, and even if I saved myself another year-and-a-half’s worth of tuition, lately I find myself wondering if that was the right choice.

I fled Linfield. I fled the University of Chicago, and if I’m being honest, I sort of fled Alex when everything happened. He fled me too, but I can’t place all the blame on him.

I was terrified. I ran. And I left it up to him to fix it.

“Remember when we went to San Francisco, and we kept saying ‘when in Rome’ whenever we wanted to buy something?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says, sounding uncertain. I’m guessing my expression must be something along the lines of crushed, because he apologetically adds, “I don’t have a great memory.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That makes sense.”

He coughs. “Do you want to watch something, or are you going back out?”

“No,” I say, “let’s watch something. If I go back to the Palm Springs Art Museum, I think the FBI will be waiting for me.”

“Why, did you steal something priceless?” Alex asks.

“I won’t know until I have it appraised,” I joke. “Hopefully this Claude Moan-ay guy turns out to be a big deal.”

Alex laughs and shakes his head, and even that small gesture seems to cost him a shock of pain. “Shit,” he says. “You have to stop making me laugh.”

“You have to stop assuming I’m joking when I’m talking about robbing art museums.”

He closes his eyes and presses his mouth into a straight line, smothering any more laughter. After a second he opens his eyes. “Okay, I’m going to go pee for—hopefully—the last time today and take another pill. You can grab my laptop from the bag and pull up Netflix, if you want.” He cautiously turns, sets his feet on the ground, and stands.

“Got it,” I say. “And do you want me to leave the nudie mags in there or get those out too?”

“Poppy,” he groans without looking back. “No joking.”

I push off the bed and tug Alex’s laptop bag onto the chair as I sort through it for the computer, then carry it back to the bed with me, opening it as I go.

He hasn’t shut it down, and when I brush the mousepad, the screen flares to life, demanding that I log in. “Password?” I call toward the bathroom.

“Flannery O’Connor,” he calls back, then flushes the toilet and turns on the sink.

I don’t ask about spaces, capitalization, or punctuation. Alex is a purist. I type it in and the log-in screen vanishes, replaced by an open web browser. Before I’ve realized it, I’m inadvertently snooping.

My heart is racing.

The water turns off. The door opens. Alex steps out, and while it might be better to pretend I didn’t see the job posting Alex had pulled up, something’s come over me, yanked out the part of my brain that—at least occasionally—filters out things I shouldn’t say.

“You’re applying to teach at Berkeley Carroll?”

The confusion on his face quickly transforms into something akin to guilt. “Oh, that.”

“That’s in New York,” I say.

“So the website suggested,” Alex says.

“New York City,” I clarify.

“Wait, that New York?” he deadpans.

“You’re moving to New York?” I say, and I’m sure I’m talking loud, but the adrenaline has me feeling like the whole world is stuffed with cotton, deadening all sound to a muffled hum.

“Probably not,” he says. “I just saw the posting.”

“But you would love New York,” I say. “I mean, think about the bookstores.”

Now he gives a smile that seems both amused and sad. He comes back to the bed and slowly lowers himself down next to me. “I don’t know,” he says. “I was just looking.”

“I won’t bother you,” I say. “If you’re worried I’ll, like, show up on your doorstep every time I have a crisis, I promise I won’t.”

His eyebrow lifts skeptically. “And if you find out I have a back spasm, will you break into my apartment with donuts and Icy Hot?”

“No?” I say, pitch lifting guiltily. His smile widens, but still, there’s something vaguely sad about it. “What is it?”

He holds my eyes for a while, like we’re caught in a game of chicken. Then he sighs and runs a hand over his face. “I don’t know,” he says. “There’s some stuff I’m still trying to work out. In Linfield. Before I make a decision like that.”

“The house?” I guess.

“That’s part of it,” he says. “I love that house. I don’t know if I could bear to sell it.”

“You could rent it out!” I suggest, and Alex gives me a look. “Right. You’re way too high-strung to be a landlord.”

“I believe you mean that everyone else is way too lax to be a tenant.”

“You could rent it to one of your brothers,” I say. “Or you can just keep it. I mean, your grandma owned it, right? Do you owe anything on it?”

“Just property taxes.” He pulls the computer away from me and exits out of the job posting. “But it’s not just the house. And it’s not just because of my dad and brothers either,” he adds when he sees my mouth opening. “I mean, obviously I’d miss my nieces and nephew a lot. But there are other things keeping me there. Or, I don’t know, there might be. I’m just kind of . . . waiting to see what happens.”

“Oh,” I say, realization dawning. “So, like . . . a woman.”

Again he holds my gaze, as if daring me to push the matter. But I don’t blink, and he cracks first. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“Oh.” And now all that vibrating excited energy seems to be freezing over, sinking low in my stomach. “So it’s Sarah. You are getting back together.”

He bows his head, rubs at his brow. “I don’t know.”

“She wants to?” I say. “Or you do?”

“I don’t know,” he says again.

“Alex.”

“Don’t do that.” He looks up. “Don’t chastise me. It’s really grim out there, dating-wise, and Sarah and I have a lot of history.”

“Yeah, a sordid history,” I say. “There’s a reason you broke up. Twice.”

“And a reason we dated,” he fires back. “Not everyone can just not look back like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. “We’re just different.”

“I know we’re different,” I say, defensive. “I also know it’s grim out there. I’m single too, Alex. I’m a card-carrying member of the Unsolicited Dick Pic Support Group. Doesn’t mean I’m running to get back with one of my exes.”

“It’s different,” he insists.

“How?” I snap.

“Because you don’t want the same things I want,” he says, half shouting, possibly the loudest I’ve ever heard him speak, and while his voice isn’t angry, it’s definitely frustrated.

When I rear back from him, I see him deflate a little, embarrassed.

He goes on, quiet and controlled once more. “I want all that stuff my brothers have,” he says. “I want to get married and have kids and grandkids and get really fucking old with my wife, and to live in our house for so long that it smells like us. Like, I want to pick out fucking furniture and paint colors and do all that Linfield stuff you think is so unbearable, okay? That’s what I want. And I don’t want to wait. No one knows how long they get, and I don’t want ten more years to go by and to find out I have fucking dick cancer or something and it’s too late for me. That stuff is what matters to me.”

Any remaining fire goes out of him, but I’m still quivering with nerves and hurt and shame, and most of all anger with myself for not understanding what was going on every time he defended our Podunk hometown, or changed the topic from Sarah, or anything else.

“Alex,” I say, on the verge of tears. I shake my head, trying to clear the storm clouds of gathering emotion. “I don’t think that stuff is unbearable. I don’t think any of it’s unbearable.”

His eyes lift heavily to mine, dart away again. Careful not to knock him, I shift closer and pull his hand into mine, fold my fingers through his. “Alex?”

He looks down at me. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry, Poppy.”

I shake my head. “I love Betty’s house,” I say. “And I love thinking about you having it, and as much as I hated school, I love thinking about you teaching there and how lucky those kids are. And I love what a good brother and son you are, and—” My words catch in my throat, and I have to stammer tearily through the rest of them. “And I don’t want you to marry Sarah, because she takes you for granted. She would never have broken up with you in the first place if she didn’t. And honestly, aside from that, I don’t want you to marry her, because she never liked me, and if you marry her . . .” I trail off before I can start sobbing.

If you marry her, I think, I will lose all of you forever.

And then, Probably no matter who you marry, I will have to lose you forever.

“I know that’s so selfish,” I say. “But it’s not just that. I really think you can do better. Sarah will be great for someone, but not for you. She doesn’t like karaoke, Alex.”

This last part comes out pathetically teary, and as he gazes down at me, he tries his best to hide the smile that pulls at his mouth. He frees his hand from mine and wraps his arm around me, pressing me lightly to him, but I don’t let myself sink into him like I want for fear of hurting him.

This injury, while miserable for him, is actually turning out to be a good buffer, because everywhere we’re touching has started to buzz, like my nerves are jockeying for more of him. He presses a kiss to the top of my head, and it feels like someone cracked an egg there, something warm and sultry dripping down over me.

I shove down the hazy memories of everything that mouth did in Croatia.

“I’m not sure I actually can do better,” Alex says, drawing me out of a blushworthy scene. “When I open Tinder, it just shows me a middle finger.”

“Seriously?” I sit up. “You have a Tinder account?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, Poppy. Grandpa has a Tinder.”

“Let me see it.”

His ears go red. “No, thanks. I’m not in the mood to get brutally heckled.”

“I can help you, Alex,” I say. “I’m a straight woman. I know how men’s Tinder profiles are received. I can figure out what you’re doing wrong.”

“What I’m doing wrong is trying to find a meaningful connection on a dating app.”

“Well, obviously,” I say. “But let’s see what else.”

He sighs. “Fine.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and hands it to me. “But go easy on me, Poppy. I’m fragile right now.”

And then he makes the face.