The Vacationers

“Hey,” Lawrence said. He wiped his wet hands on his pants.

“Welcome back,” Charles said. He leaned his head against Lawrence’s shoulder. “I’m tired.”

“I know you are. But hey, at least you’re not wearing an adult-sized playsuit,” he said, gesturing to a woman walking out of the jet bridge at the gate opposite the bathroom. She was small, probably not much over five feet tall, with soft pink terry-cloth sweatpants and matching sweatshirt, both of which were snug enough to show off her round bottom and otherwise compact figure. “Weren’t those outlawed a decade ago?” The woman stepped out of the line of traffic and turned around, waiting for someone. A tall man with a moppish head of brown curly hair emerged, nodding at the waiting woman in pink.

Charles spun around so that he was facing the wall. “Oh, shit,” he said. “It’s Bobby’s girlfriend.”

“Not the one in the playsuit,” Lawrence said, turning his body so that they were both facing the wall.

“We can’t both be pointing this way,” Charles said. “Shit.”

“Charles?”

Charles and Lawrence both turned around, arms open wide. “Hiiiiiiiii,” they said in unison. Bobby and his girlfriend had shortened the gap between them, and were now no more than four feet away.

“Hello, handsome,” Charles said, pulling Bobby close for a hug. They patted each other on the back affectionately, and when he pulled out of the embrace, Bobby kept one arm slung around Charles’s shoulder as if they were posing for a team photo.

“How was your flight? Hi, Lawrence.” Bobby smiled widely. He had the easy tan of a person who spent most of his days outdoors, though that wasn’t the case. Lawrence thought Bobby might in fact look too tan, as driving around real estate properties in Miami wouldn’t afford so much sunlight unless he drove a convertible, which seemed unlikely. Maybe he spent every weekend on the beach, his face and arms and chest slathered in ta

“Fine. How about yours?” Charles said. No one had spoken to Bobby’s girlfriend, nor had there been any effort to introduce her. Charles knew that they’d met once or twice at a Christmas di

“Carmen was so excited, we didn’t sleep at all,” Bobby said, finally looking over his shoulder to find her. “You remember Charles and Lawrence, right?”

“Hello,” she said, reaching out her hand. Lawrence shook it first, then Charles. Carmen had a firm grip, a handshake that surprised them both. She had olive-colored, creaseless skin that belied her age, and a ponytail that looked mussed from the airplane, an off-center whale spout. Lawrence thought she looked like one of the Spice Girls after a decade out of the spotlight, slightly worse for wear.

“Of course,” Charles said. “How could we forget?”

Fra

“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” she said, rubbing his back. Fra

“Hi, Mom,” Bobby said, blinking his eyes at Carmen over his mother’s shoulder. “You can let go, really, I’ll be here for weeks.”

“Oh, fine,” Fra

“Fine,” Carmen said, smiling. “We watched movies.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, stretching out her calves.

“Great,” Fra

Fra

“It’s so good to see you, Lawrence,” Bobby said. “I haven’t seen you since before you guys got married. When was that, a year ago? Two years ago? I know it was in the summer.” Carmen jerked the car forward and merged into the airport traffic.

“It’ll be three years next month,” Lawrence said, closing his eyes and briefly thanking a godlike figure that the Spanish drove on the right side of the road. “You know what they say about time.”

“What’s that?” Bobby said, lowering his window shade to take a peek in the mirror. For a moment, he caught Lawrence’s eyes and smiled. Bobby was sweeter than his sister; in fact, he was sweeter than the entire rest of the family. As far as Lawrence could tell, Bobby had no hard edges whatsoever, a quality one didn’t often come across in people who had grown up in Manhattan. Lawrence felt his shoulders relax a bit.

“Oh, you know. It flies.” Lawrence crossed his arms and stared out the window. His own family had never been on vacation together, not since he was a child. Even then, he didn’t think they’d done more than one or two trips to a smoky campsite, where they’d all slept in the same dank, mildewing tent. It seemed like folly to imagine that one could fill a house (or a tent) with relatives and still expect to have a pleasant vacation. He and Charles had already discussed this: after Mallorca, they were going to go somewhere else for a few days, just the two of them, where they would be mercifully free from small talk and other people’s emotional baggage. Lawrence was thinking about Hudson, or maybe Woodstock, but Charles found upstate New York too buggy. They could wait until the weather shifted and then fly to Palm Springs. All Lawrence wanted to talk about was who had a baby, who was still waiting, about wallpaper for the nursery, about names and strollers and where they could buy some nice lesbian’s breast milk.