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Vacations |
by Kevin Toth
My girlfriend breaks up with me after her parrot, who can see the future, says that we'll never last. I tell her that's crazy.
I know, she says, rising from the dinner table, her food untouched. But my parrot is never wrong. She goes to get my coat.
I glare at the parrot. He tells me I'm doomed to die alone and unhappy. My ex-girlfriend comes back into the room with my coat, takes me by the elbow and ushers me towards her front door. Did you hear what he said? I ask.
Oh, that, she says. Don't be too concerned. He says that to everyone.
I put out my arms and wedge myself into the doorway. But what about the cock?
She stops. What about it?
I think we should consult the cock. You owe me that much.
She folds her arms and looks at the ceiling. Fine, she says. The parrot squawks.
I draw a chalk circle on the hardwood floor of my exes' living room, and divide it into 26 equal wedges. A to Z. I pour a few kernels of corn into each wedge. My ex places her pet rooster in the center of the circle. It stands with one leg raised, its crest vibrating with each shake of its head.
Come on, cock, I say.
The rooster pecks a kernel from the wedge marked 'Y.' After that, it seems to lose interest.
This is going to take all night, says the parrot.
Hours later, when the rooster leaves the circle, my ex and I are left with the following message: YFKDOAAAMDZIWW.
This is inconclusive, she says. At best. I'm going with the parrot.
Hold on, I say. I run to the kitchen, fetching a knife and one of her goats, an old gray thing. I lead it into the dining room by the thick brown rope that dangles from its neck. Flipping the goat up onto the table by its scrawny legs, I slice its belly wide open. A torrent of blood sloshes out, staining the tablecloth. No guts. I yank the rift in the goat's abdomen open with my bare hands and stare into the wailing animal's hollow interior. The inside layer of skin is tanned and silky smooth.
I say, Well?
My ex says, Well what? That's the good-luck-in-housecleaning goat, not the entrail-reading goat. Please leave.
For a week I try calling my exes' apartment, but I just get the parrot each time. He squawks about the promotions that will pass me by or the leg that will have to be removed, then hangs up without letting me leave a message or even get a word in edgewise. My friends tell me I need to move on and loosen up, get away from life for a while. So, knowing that next week's management interview will be a pointless endeavor, I call a travel agent and pack my bags.
***
There are bees on your flight. At least seven or eight of them. How they made it past airport security is anyone's guess. Though the bees are small, and their buzzing is droned out by the hum of the plane engines, it's not difficult to discern their locations. Your fellow passengers swat their hands above their heads, shriek, laugh nervously.
"I swell up like a balloon. And I get so red. You wouldn't believe."
"Oh, no, I know where you're coming from. I was stung once? In the third grade? The principle of the school had to drive me to the hospital. Swear to God."
"No allergies here. But still. It's unpleasant."
You look out the window next to your seat. A tiny locomotive crosses a bridge over a river of clear, hardened glue. Every light in the mountain village comes on at once. Affixed to their bases along the sidewalk, the townspeople continue to wave long after the train has gone.
Conversation passes through the cabin. What's to be done about the bees? According to your neighbor, an elderly woman in a lime green dress, word from row eighteen has it that the sky marshal is formulating a plan.
The stewardess pushes her snack cart down the aisle. A bee circles her hivish hair-do. Grunting in annoyance, the stewardess screws up her face, waves a hand back and forth in front of it. With her free hand, she deposits a foil-wrapped package on your neighbor's lowered tray table, then your own. You tear open the package and a dozen teeth rattle onto the plastic tray. You inspect the foil wrapper. Ingredients: teeth, taken only from grade-A John and Jane Does. Depending on the source's eating habits, teeth may contain traces of nuts or nut oil. The teeth gleam under your small reading light. You pop a fat molar into your mouth. The sensation isn't unpleasant. Plenty of little grooves and crevices to work your tongue into. A strange, slightly salty taste. You realize, with some embarrassment, that you don't know whether to suck or bite.
Your neighbor crunches away merrily. Occasionally, she inserts a thumb and forefinger between her lips and removes a tiny knot of silver or gold. These she stows in a wadded up napkin in her purse.
You set the molar between two of your own and give it a test bite. It grinds and scrapes, but won't give. You hold it in place with your tongue, clamp down on it until your jaws ache, but the tooth will not be undone. Frustrated, you spit it into your palm and inspect it. It's a beautiful tooth, flawless even. The three remaining teeth on your neighbor's tray are misshapen, corn yellow, riddled with cavities and imperfections. Easy to pulverize. Your collection of teeth, on the other hand, is too clean, too nice. Not even a single filling.
A bee lands in your open palm, next to the shining molar. You quickly close your hand and chew the bug into paste. Somewhere behind you, a man yelps, then moans that he's been stung. A baby cries. You watch the shuddering array of pinpricks and glitter on the strip of black paper that passes your window.
In the mountain village, every light is on. A tiny locomotive crosses a bridge over a river of glue. The townspeople wave.
***
I am attending a lecture on love, sex, and attraction that I saw advertised in a café window. Appropriately enough, it is in a language that I cannot understand. The woman giving the lecture wears an expensive-looking black gown, black, elbow-length gloves, and black sunglasses. Her hair is also black, but perhaps only because it is wet. She places a series of transparencies on the overhead projector beside her, the only source of illumination in the dim auditorium.
A diagram of a Neanderthal skull appears on the large screen at the rear of the stage. The skull is crammed with indecipherable word balloons connected by a maze of arrows and dotted lines. The woman's gloved finger appears large on the screen as she indicates various areas of the bony hollow.
The next transparency shows a trio of color photographs: a yawning lion, a rifle round piercing an apple, an obese opera diva in mid-fall down a flight of stairs. These images elicit hoots and squeals from the audience. I look around, my eyes straining in the darkness. The row in front of me is taken up by a group of apes, all throwing their arms about and bouncing in their seats. On my left is a crocodile, sitting upright, its tail sticking out between its stubby legs and dangling on the floor. An ostrich sits at my right. It ruffles its feathers and squawks intermittently. It must notice my staring, as it cocks its head and gives me an ugly look. I turn my attention back to the lecture.
The screen now shows an image of a little cartoon man dancing with a peacock. The man's tongue lolls out of his mouth and his eyes bulge crazily. The woman, still speaking in the same cool, even tones, has removed one of her long gloves and is twirling it over her head, burlesque-style. After a few moments, she drops the glove at her feet on the stage. The volume of the audience's shrieks only grows louder as the lecturer slowly begins peeling off her other glove. Not wanting to draw undue attention to myself, I pump my fist in the air and holler.
The lecturer twirls and drops her other glove, turns her back to the audience. A pair of peacocks emerges from either side of the stage. They flank the young woman, who is in the process of unzipping her dress, swaying her hips to the rhythm of her speech. Just as the dress falls away, the peacocks spread their tail feathers, obscuring the lecturer's bare backside.
I have to admit, I'm getting into this. The air in the auditorium is stifling. I take off my jacket and loosen my necktie.
The woman turns back around. Only her head and shoulders are visible above the blues and greens of the peacocks' tail feathers, brilliant even in the darkness. The woman throws up her hands, releasing twin bursts of black undergarments and confetti that litter the stage and obscure the overhead projector's display.
The lecture is over. The crowd is on its feet, louder than ever. The lecturer smiles and waves, acknowledging the applause. The heat is unbearable. I unbutton my shirt, now soaked through with sweat. Bouquets of roses tumble overhead and shower the stage. Stumbling over my pants as I struggle to remove them, heart pounding, I'm swept up in the stampede towards the stage to congratulate the lecturer on her brilliance and insight.
***
It is early evening. Three horses lean against a fence by the side of a country road. They preen themselves, make idle chatter. A small blue car approaches. It pulls to the shoulder and the engine goes silent. A man steps out of the car. His thin hair is disheveled; there are bags under his eyes. He wrings his hands, checks up and down the empty road before crossing it. The horses straighten, adjust their sequined, low-cut saddles.
Shuffling his feet, the man looks the horses over. They toss their manes, flutter their long eyelashes. While the three of them are quite fetching, as horses go, the man clearly favors the dark one in the shell-pink saddle. The other two horses whisper in one another's ears and stifle their laughter, put up hooves to hide their toothy smiles. The blonde one kicks a battered and dusty riding helmet at the man's feet. Sheepishly, he dons his protection. He pulls the chin strap extra tight, sending his two-horse audience into a renewed fit of laughter.
Clambering over the fence, the man takes his chosen horse by the reins. He leads her out into a field of trampled grass and sunflowers. After checking the road again, he takes hold of the saddle. The horse rolls her large eyes as three times the man, grunting and cursing, attempts to pull himself up onto her back, and three times tumbles over into the grass. Watching from their place at the fence, the other horses laugh and shake their heads. Finally, on the fourth try, the man manages to pull himself on, settling triumphantly into the saddle. He digs his heels into the horses flanks—not too hard—and they're off, galloping across the field. A leisurely pace at first. Then faster and faster.
Emboldened by a combination of speed, motion, and contact, the man whoops and yee-haws. He runs one hand through the horse's mane, raises the other above his head, unafraid even as he bounces up and down in the saddle. The horse runs down the sunflowers, stamps the yellow ray petals into the ground. Seeds crackle and burst under her hooves.
From the other side of the road, the man's little blue car watches in silence, grinding the irritating road pebbles between its tire treads. It stares at the wide, grassy field and the smile on the man's face. Two puddles of milky water collect in the dirt beneath its headlights.
***
Our cruise ship, two days out to sea, has hit some rough water. It drunkenly rocks back and forth, and despite its immense size, the smallest waves send it reeling. Around a mouthful of brackish cud, leftovers from the midnight buffet, my bunk mate tells me that I'm looking a little green. She offers to get me a glass of warm milk, saying it will settle my stomach. I belch and decline.
Suit yourself, she says, and goes back to telling me, in a slow, ponderous voice, about her father's farm. I'm barely listening. Her simple, down-home ways, while charming at first, have only become irritating during the time I've spent with her. I stare out of our cabin's porthole, trying to keep my gorge down and my eyes fixed on something stationary, the stars. I pick out Orion, the only constellation that I know.
The ship pitches violently to the left. The floor is now at a forty-five degree angle. Everything in the cabin starts sliding down slope toward me, including my companion, who moos in surprise as her dainty feet go out from under her. I leap away from the portal onto our bed as she tumbles. She slides to the wall, where one of her hooves crashes right through the porthole window. The night sky, ink-black, comes rushing into our tiny room. My bunk mate kicks and struggles as the dark windswept currents wash over her. Stars bob on the surface like pearls.
I reach my hand down into the chilly air to fish out the white telephone that dropped from its place on the nightstand. It appears relatively undamaged. I dial a random service number and yell over the howling wind. We've sprung a leak in my cabin, I say. We're taking on night, and fast. The voice on the other end of the phone says to remain calm, that he'll inform the captain. The sky is coming in quicker than I could have imagined, filling the room up to chest level, staining my pajamas, then neck level, then over my head. The light from the stars is so faint. I can't see my hands in front of my face. I wish I had a flashlight. I tell my companion that I'm going to climb up and try to open the cabin door.
Be careful, she says.
I dig my hands into the bed clothes, pull myself upwards, grope around in the darkness for a door knob. I find it and twist it open. The door falls inward with a squeak and night rushes up into the faintly lit hallway.
From somewhere below me, cradled in the V of the cabin's floor and starboard wall, my companion gives a low moan of despair. What have you done now?
I fall back on the headboard and wrap the thin bed sheets around me, shivering in the arctic air. The captain's voice blares from the intercom, ordering all passengers to abandon ship. I hear shouts from the neighboring rooms, the scraping of my bunkmate's hooves on the wall and floor as she attempts to regain her footing. I try to pick out Orion in the swirling blackness, maybe somewhere near the bathroom door. The cruise liner has stopped rocking. I look through the shattered porthole and see the surface of the ocean far below us, specked with brilliant white icebergs, illuminated by the moon. We're moving upward, away from the sea, our ship slowly sinking into the depths of the sky.
Kevin Toth's work has appeared in Karamu, the Bryant Literary Review, and elsewhere. His television credits include Deadliest Catch (Crab no. 156,399,293) and Sesame Street (The Letter "P").
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