Page 34 of People We Meet on Vacation

Suddenly, the six days ahead of us seem impossibly long. We should have taken a three-day trip. Just the length of the wedding festivities, when there’d be buffers galore and free booze and time blocked out that Alex would be busy with his brother’s bachelor party and whatever else.

“Should we go down to the pool?” I say, a little too loud, because by now my heart is racing and I have to yell to hear myself over it.

“Sure,” Alex says, then turns back to the door and freezes. His mouth hangs open as he considers his words. “I’ll change in the bathroom, and you can just shout when you’re finished?”

Right. It’s a studio. One open room with no doors except the one to the bathroom.

Which wouldn’t have been awkward, if we weren’t both being so freaking awkward.

“Mm-hm,” I say. “Sure.”

10

Ten Summers Ago

WE WANDER THEcity of Victoria until our feet hurt, our backs ache, and all that sleep wedidn’tget on the flights makes our bodies feel heavy and our brains light and floaty. Then we stop for dumplings in a tiny nook of a place whose windows are tinted and whose red-painted walls are elaborately looped in gold mountainscapes and forests and flowing rivers that serpentine through low, rounded hills.

We’re the only people inside—it’s three p.m., not quite late enough for dinner, but the air-conditioning is powerful and the food is divine, and we’re so exhausted we can’t stop laughing about every little thing.

The hoarse, voice-cracking yelp Alex let out when the plane touched down this morning.

The suit-wearing man who sprints past the restaurant at top speed, his arms held flat to his sides.

The gallery girl in the Empress Hotel who spent thirty minutes trying to sell us a six-inch, twenty-one-thousand-dollar bear sculpture while we dragged our tattered luggage around behind us.

“We don’t really... have money for... that,” Alex said, sounding diplomatic.

The girl nodded enthusiastically. “Hardly anyone does. But when art speaks to you, you find a way to make it work.”

Somehow, neither of us could bring ourselves to tell the girl that the twenty-one-thousand-dollar bear wasnotspeaking to us, but we’d spent all day, since then, picking things up—a signed Backstreet Boys album in the used record shop, a copy of a novel calledWhat My G-Spot Is Telling Youin a squat little bookstore off a cobbled street, a pleather catsuit in a fetish shop I led Alex into primarily to embarrass him—and asking,Does this speak to you?

Yes, Poppy, it’s saying, Bye-Bye-Bye.

No, Alex, tell yourG-spot to speak up.

Yes, I’ll take it for twenty-one thousand dollars and not a penny less!

We took turns asking and answering, and now, slumped over our black lacquered table, we can’t stop half-deliriously picking up spoons and napkins, making them talk to one another.

Our server is around our age, heavily pierced with a soft lisp and a good sense of humor. “If that soy says anything saucy, let me know,” she says. “It’s got a reputation around here.”

Alex tips her 30 percent, and the whole walk to the bus stop, I tease him for blushing whenever she looked at him, and he teases me for making eyes at the cashier in the record shop, which is fair, because I definitely did.

“I’ve never seen a city this flowery,” I say.

“I’ve never seen a city this clean,” he says.

“Should we move to Canada?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Does Canadaspeak to you?”

With the buses, and the walking between stops, it takes two hours total to get the car I informally rented online through WWT, Women Who Travel.

I’m so relieved it actually exists—and that the keys are underthe floor mat in the back seat, just like the car’s owner, Esmeralda, said they would be—that I start clapping at the sight of it.

“Wow,” Alex says, “this car is really speaking to you.”

“Yes,” I say, “it’s saying,Don’t let Alex drive.”

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