Here Today, Gone to Maui (2 page)

“I gave myself an extra hour for traffic,” he said as I put my arms around him.

“So you’re on time.”

“No, I’m an hour early.” He kissed the top of my head and strode into my condo. “Something smells good.”

“I made walnut bread this morning.” He was in the kitchen now, nosing around. “It’s on the counter.”

He was already opening the fridge to get butter. Slicing the homemade bread, he made what I called his Hungry Jimmy noise:
Mmmmmmm
. He sounded like an airplane. In our first month or so together, Jimmy made that noise whenever he saw me coming out of the shower. Now, five months later, he made it when I baked. I take my baking very seriously, so I wasn’t as offended as you might imagine.

He took a big bite. “I luff yer walnut bread.”

“I know you do.” I gazed at him for a moment and resisted the urge to say,
And I love you
.

It still shocked me, sometimes, to be going out with a guy as good-looking as Jimmy. I’m no troll, but Jimmy—blond, tanned, sculpted—had that kind of freak-of-nature beauty that makes people stare.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” my sister, Beth, asked last fall, after I’d e-mailed a photo. “I mean, dating a guy who’s prettier than you are?” (Rude, yes, but Beth is my only sibling, so she gets away with it.)

“You haven’t seen me in a while,” I told her. (Beth lives in New Jersey.) “I got my hair layered, and I’ve lost three pounds. Plus, I’ve started wearing this new mineral-based makeup. It’s supposed to make your skin look airbrushed.”

“I’m sure you look great,” she said in a tone generally reserved for the stupid and infirm. “But this guy looks like a model.” She said it like that was a bad thing. “He must have girls throwing themselves at him.”

“He’s given me no reason to doubt him,” I said, suddenly wondering when he would.

Ten years earlier, I had moved to California on a whim. It was the first and seemingly the last spontaneous thing I ever did. I had just graduated from college in Boston, and one of my roommates, having received a job offer in Los Angeles, asked me to join her for the three-thousand-mile car ride. I said yes immediately, images of a new life already forming in my mind.

In California, I would live in the moment. I would take foggy-morning strolls on the beach; at night, I would fall asleep to the rhythm of the waves. I’d learn to surf, maybe even scuba dive. Surely California would make me a different person: freer, wilder. I pictured myself sporting a year-round tan and wearing colorful sarongs over my bikinis. (I never did master the sarong thing. It always looks like I’ve knotted a tablecloth around my waist.)

When we arrived in L.A. my friend spent two tearful hours on the phone with her Boston boyfriend before announcing that she was going home to marry him. (I missed the wedding. I missed the divorce, too.)

But I stayed. My first year was spent in a cramped, shared rental in Hermosa Beach, two miles from the Pacific. I could smell the ocean but I couldn’t hear it. Mostly I heard traffic, sirens, and my roommates having sex with an assortment of boys, most of whom seemed to be named Jason.

A temp agency found me a clerical job with a company that made cement fiber roofing. They were so impressed with my collating and copying skills that they hired me to work full-time in their personnel department, first as an assistant, then as a benefits administrator. After a couple of years I outgrew that job and moved to my current employer, starting once again as an assistant in their human resources department (which sounds so much more interesting than “personnel”) and eventually working my way up to department head. Career opportunities abound for anyone skilled at living by a daily planner.

I moved beyond that cramped rental in Hermosa Beach, too. After a year of parking tickets and an hour-long commute, I moved inland: first to Fountain Valley and then, later, to Brea, putting more and more distance between me and the Pacific. Now I live ten minutes from work, in a one-bedroom condo for which I secured a fifteen-year, fixed-rate mortgage. There’s a Wal-Mart nearby, a Linens ’n Things, a T.J.Maxx. I cannot smell the ocean; I’ve almost forgotten that it’s there. If not for the mild weather, I could be anywhere.

“When we get to the airport, if we have time, we can go over the week’s itinerary,” I said, giving my kitchen a quick wipe with the counter sponge (I use a different one for the dishes).

“What itinerary?”

“I’ve written up a tentative schedule of day-by-day activities. So we don’t get to the end of the week and get really bummed because we forgot to go, say, parasailing.” I rinsed the sponge and put it back in its stainless-steel holder.

Jimmy grinned. “That would totally ruin the vacation.” He cut himself another hunk of bread and took it into the living room. I tried not to notice the crumbs tumbling onto my freshly vacuumed carpet. He clicked on the television and settled onto my couch. To encourage him to spend more time at my condo, I’d TiVoed all of Jimmy’s favorite shows: the
CSI
’s, the
Law & Order
s,
Without a Trace
.

My condo is the first home I’ve ever bought. The day I closed on it (two years earlier, a month before my thirtieth birthday), I hauled in a sleeping bag to spend the night, too excited to wait for the movers. I’ve always disliked clutter, so I furnished it simply but warmly: beige carpet, toasty walls, sage furniture, and cranberry accents. At first, I accessorized with large bowls of fresh fruit and vases stuffed with fresh-cut flowers. I can only eat so much fruit on my own, though, so the oranges on the bottom of the bowls were always molding, emitting a biting, sour smell, while the apples turned mealy and brown, and the pears rotted and ran. As for the flowers, buying armfuls of tulips seemed homey at first, like giving myself a nice little treat. But after a while, the effort began to feel sad.

By the time Jimmy entered my life, the fruit bowls had been stacked in cabinets, the vases shoved far back on the upper shelves. But still. I was proud of my little condo, with its granite-tile countertops, its double sink in the bathroom. I liked my gleaming cherry bed, my tidy kitchen table.

“Nice place,” Jimmy said, the first time he saw my condo, a couple of nights after we met. “You know what it reminds me of?”

“What?” I said, thinking:
Decorating magazine?

“A hotel room.”

I’d added some more throw pillows since then, a few more prints on the wall. But Jimmy was right: my condo looked like a place where no one lived. Perhaps a few crumbs on the floor weren’t so terrible.

“I think I’m ready,” I said, consulting a list. “I’ve emptied the dishwasher, left a light on, locked my windows. I put vacation holds on my mail and the newspaper.”

The list seemed too short. How could a life be so easy to leave, if only for a week? I didn’t even have any pets to feed or plants to water.

“You shouldn’t have put the hold on your newspaper,” Jimmy said, flicking through the stations as if he were playing a video game.

“Why?” I pulled my black suitcase across the room to the door. I’d tied a yellow ribbon on the handle to make it easy to spot on the baggage carousel.

“You never want people to know you’re not home. Someone who works for the newspaper could break in, or they could tip someone off.”

“You don’t honestly believe that,” I said.

“You can’t be too trusting.”

 

* * *

We arrived at LAX three hours before our flight. “You win,” I said after we’d checked in.

“What?” Jimmy asked, all innocence.

“We didn’t have to be this early.”

He stroked my brown hair. “Yes, we did. If we’d been merely on time, you would have worried.”

“I just want things to be perfect,” I said.

“I just want you to be happy.”

We passed the time buying trashy magazines at a newsstand and drinking icy piña coladas at a surfer-themed lounge (surfboard-shaped tables, surfboards over the bar: you get the picture). We hadn’t even boarded the plane, yet I already felt like I was on vacation. As I sucked out the bottom of my drink, Jimmy caught the bartender’s eye and held up two fingers.

“As long as we’ve got a minute, we should go over the schedule,” I said, reaching into my carry-on bag for my planner (at least I hadn’t typed the list; that would have been really anal). Jimmy traveled to Maui on business at least once a month, but the trips were so packed with meetings that he never got to do any of the tourist things.

“I made up a schedule, too,” Jimmy said.

“Really?” I was touched. Jimmy knew how much I liked to plan ahead.

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his tanned, toned arms behind his head. “Tonight? I’m thinking we arrive late and have sex.”

“Okay . . .”

“Then tomorrow morning, we have sex and then go to the beach. Or maybe we should go to the beach and then have sex. It could go either way.” He paused as if considering. “Day after that, I’m thinking, beach, sex, and then the day after that, maybe we go to the pool for a change of pace. And then have sex.”

I tried to look amused. And in a way, I was. Four weeks earlier, when Jimmy announced that his business was good, his frequent-flier balance was high, and he was taking me to Maui, I thought we were taking a step forward in our relationship. Instead, he’d almost immediately started pulling away from me. Some days he forgot to call. And more than once when he’d spent the night, he’d said, “I’m really tired. Okay if we just go to sleep?” I was starting to worry that he no longer found me attractive.

He leaned across the surfboard-shaped table and took my hand. “It doesn’t matter what we do. I’m just pumped to be spending a whole week with you.” He held my eyes until I smiled. “So, what’s the plan?”

Still holding his hand, I looked at the list. “Tomorrow, Friday, I figure we’ll explore the Hyatt and hang out by the pool, maybe walk down to Whaler’s Village for dinner.” I checked his eyes. He nodded.

“Saturday, I’ve penciled in sunrise at Haleakala—you know, the volcano—and a driving tour of the up-country. Sunday, diving and snorkeling in the morning, a walking tour of downtown Lahaina in the afternoon. Monday, the road to Hana—that’ll take all day. Tuesday, parasailing off of Kaanapali Beach, and then a luau for dinner.” I paused to check his reaction. “Too cheesy?”

“Nah, it sounds fun.”

Back to the list. “Wednesday, we can drive to the town of Wailea. I know you’ve been there for work, but there’s a lava field, a red sand beach—lots to explore. Thursday we’re taking the red-eye out, so I’m thinking we take it easy, maybe hang by the pool.”

“Wow,” he said. “We’re gonna need a vacation from our vacation.”

I looked up from the list. “Is it too much? Because we can change things as we go along—you know, play it by ear. I just thought it would be helpful to have something to refer to.”

He brushed my cheek with his fingers. “You’re crazy, you know that? And I mean that in a good way.”

“I’d better check in with work,” I said, digging my cell phone out of my tropical-print tote bag. “Work” meant Wills Rubber Company, manufacturer of premium playground mats. I was the human resources manager.

Lena, the receptionist, put me on hold for about three minutes before finally answering. “Jane! Omigod, I’m so glad you called!”

“What’s wrong?” I ran through my various to-do lists in my head without coming up with anything left undone.

“Tomorrow’s Friday!” she said.

“I know,” I said, thinking:
Friday, Friday—what was I supposed to do on Friday?
The monthly newsletter had been distributed, I’d given new-employee information to the payroll clerk, and I’d returned all of my messages and e-mails. A customer-service representative with a fondness for micro-miniskirts had received my standard “appropriate office attire” speech, while a receiving clerk had been put on notice about his chronic tardiness.

“Who’s going to bring in muffins?” Lena demanded.

A piña colada appeared in front of me. I don’t normally drink this much—or anything—during the day. Jimmy held his glass up in a toast. I winked.

“You always make muffins on Friday,” Lena said. “You probably don’t know how much that means to people, but honest to God, I’ve had at least five people say to me, ‘If Jane’s not here, who’s going to bring the muffins?’ ”

Jimmy took a long drink of his piña colada. Then he looked at my breasts and licked his lips.

“You can always buy muffins,” I told Lena.

“It’s not the same,” she said. “Everyone counts on you. It’s like you’re the company mom.”

“I’m the
company mom
?” I said.

Jimmy threw back his head and laughed. A small white scar ran along his jawline. I loved that scar: everybody needs an imperfection.

“Try Costco,” I told Lena. “You can get a dozen muffins for something like eight bucks.”

After that, I turned off my cell phone. “Where were we?” I asked, picking up my drink.

“On our way to Maui,” Jimmy said.

There was no question that Jimmy had changed my attitude toward work. Before we started dating, I arrived at the office early and left late—usually with my arms full of paperwork. My work was my life for the simple reason that I
had
no other life.

Ironically, the shift in attention had been good for my career. A month into the relationship, my boss called me into his office. Bob Wills had started Wills Rubber Company thirty-five years earlier. Mr. Wills was sixty-four years old, married with five grown children. He spoke softly and carried a big stick up his ass.

“Jane.” He paused. “It has come to my attention.”

He cleared his throat. He hummed. He always hummed when he had trouble finding the right words.

He took a deep breath and soldiered on. “What I mean is, here at Wills Rubber Company, we value your contributions.” He turned red.

I had no idea what he was getting at.