Vacation Read Online Free PDF

was her calling again the next day.
    If you say so.
    I have to stay and work.
    Duty gums the shoe, as they say.
    What?
    I’m just saying.
    The slate of his brown desk, the planes and circles scattered over his screen, the uncoil of the phone cord. He rose, walked fourteen blocks in winter sun. Stood outside the building that did not but was supposed to contain her, stood beside a fountain of cement. He looked up, saw nothing, saw lit and darkened windows. The moral grid of steel spired up the side.
    That, a hard man would count as the first night he followed her.
    That time, of course, he didn’t get very far and he didn’t see her.
    What could he do that night other than not sleep, wake dull, proceed as expected outwardly?
    So she had lied and sneaked, a fact he could hardly get his head around.
    Reasons not to confront her: (he couldn’t think of any).
    Reasons not to confront her: he couldn’t believe it.
    So she had lied about staying late at work. And she lied again when she came home. And she lied again the next day, and once more when she came home.
    She hadn’t been raised by warm people. Her father had a phony laugh. Her mother was prim, airtight, walked around looking cheated. The two of them appeared every other season, perched on their seats as if slightly offended by their surroundings and who was in them, and then melted back into the Midwest. Myers thought sadly of his wife as a little girl being raised among these people and forgave her own distanced, lonely air.
    She called again. Would be late.
    He ran the fourteen blocks, five of them long, nine short, because no way, wherever she thought she was going, she wasn’t. He ran, sifting through the baby carriages, the shoppers, pushing if he had to, because what is worse, to knock someone over or miss the chance to stop her flat?
    These were the sky-white winter days of inventory-clearance, streetside flea markets, sidewalk racks.
    (It was the only time he had to run. After that he strolled, arrived early. In the spring, which fell upon them grimly with its hellish green, he ate a hot dog and waited for her to come down. She had dispensed with the calls to his office by that time, in any case.)
    But that day he ran, pushing people out of the way. Let them fall over. Let them arrest him. Put him away. This disregard for the safety and comfort of others may be shocking but it was not as much of a shock as what he got just as he came tearing into the plaza—
    She emerged from the building, walked right by.
    In the past week they’d talked over meals and at bedtime about couch sizes, store names, power strips…
    She didn’t see him, didn’t look his way at all. He froze, could not move. In the air, a border scratched between them.
    …trivia (origin of the beanbag, sea-foam features, name of the world’s greatest dolphin trainer), summer trips (beach, forest, falls?).
    Her bag swung by her side. The light didn’t light up anything special, didn’t pick her out of the crowd. It lit what was there without expression, without distinguishing itself in any way other than the obstinacy of its own existence. Even the metal buckle on her bag, holding it all together so the mess didn’t tumble out, the sunlight didn’t shine on it that Myers could see, and he could see a lot from where he stood that day. He really could.
    She was just a woman walking up the street.
    He did not go after her, did not run down the long shadow of the side-walk, swing her around by the arm. He stepped back, watched. People got around each other and into the space between them. The woman who lied walked away, did not yet know she’d been caught.
    That he counted as the second day he followed her.
    Other seconds: helpings, hands, rates, but mostly having to do with time, the time it took for one thought to follow another, and other followings, such as heartbeats, blinks, steps. Many of them added together or separated. He felt them. Not the minutes, mind you, but the seconds.
    The