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Last winter, we went on vacation to the Caribbean. When the plane landed, we were so exhausted we could barely lift our bags. We checked in at the hotel, and got rid of the suitcases, and without unpacking went out the gate to look at the casino. A guard pointed us in the opposite direction from the beach, down a lonely dirt road, a five-minute walk from the hotel gate.
The casino was a small white stucco building, with bars on the windows and a brown wooden sign. There were some German tourists in there, and I overheard a couple of Americans talking, but the rest of the faces in the room were either friendly employees or locals—whatever, black people, people from there. I played blackjack, and I was on a roll. Winning relaxes me; at some point in the night I was up two thousand dollars. Diane played the slot machines, going all night without a hit, waiting for me to finish. I cashed out because the place was closing. It was just after one in the morning. We were practically the last ones in there, definitely the last white ones in the place. They paid out my winnings and I followed Diane to the door.
I had a buzz on. I put the money in the belly of my shirt, because I couldn't carry it all in my pockets. It was half the cost of the trip, although that wasn't an issue. Two guys came out of the casino behind us, local guys, and we nodded to them and they went to their car. They pulled it around in our direction. Diane looked back and saw the car; she looked at me—there was that funny moment—and then she started running down the road.
The car came up behind us. It took me a second to figure out what was going on. Diane had a ten- or twenty-yard lead on me—she's a fast runner, she was a gymnast in high school—and I started running with all this goddamn money bouncing around, but I couldn't keep up. I was telling her to wait for me, and yelling at her not to run, because it would only make things worse, incriminate us or attract their attention, although she did have a point. The car kept slowing down, because the road was in terrible shape. I was running as fast as possible, Diane's white pants disappearing in the dark in front of me, the money bouncing around everywhere in my shirt. Lights from the hotel loomed in front of us now, the car bounding into those barrel-size humps and potholes, its headlights leaping across us and up into the trees. I could hear the thumping of the engine—it was an old jeep and it sounded like a washing machine—but the noise came both from right behind me and from far away, echoing through the woods. I was chugging now, gaining on Diane. I could see the hotel guard, asleep in his shack.
We got to the gate and the guard sat up. The car pulled up alongside us, and the two guys looked over at us, and we looked at them. The guard had a shotgun. He went and spoke to the driver. Then they turned around and drove away. I had been happy back there at the blackjack table, beating the slit-eyed dealer, but with the sudden heat and the run down the road, the airplane food and the funny smell of this fertile jungle, I wanted to puke.
We were staying in a bungalow beside the main building, one of a row of cottages in the trees along the beach. Diane went into the bathroom without a word. I was so freaked that I didn't know what to do. I didn't want that cash in there with us, so after she went to sleep I walked around back, behind the cabin, and buried the money in the sand. It was dark.
Then I got into bed. I listened to Diane breathe. I couldn't tell if she was asleep or not, and I'd become afraid of that lately, of not knowing—and of how it didn't matter. We hadn't had sex since Thanksgiving. Diane said her ass was too fat. We hadn't enjoyed each other's company now in a long time, and before this trip there were nights when we didn't speak. Earlier that day, standing in line at the airport with all our luggage, she said to me, "I'm fat. I feel ugly."
I said, "We're going on a great vacation, so try to have fun."
She said, "You hate me." I didn't know what to say. I did hate her, partly, she was right, but not for being fat: Diane is small and cute, everything on her is round and full anyway. But I was taking it very seriously that she was repulsed by me, that she stopped me anytime I tried to touch her.
I still felt love for her, too, but we didn't have the same outlook anymore. And I didn't like listening to her complain all the time. My life was going the way I always thought it should—I mean my job, and money. The contracts I'd sold last quarter were huge, my company had just bought a smaller firm and merged, we were booming—and I had nobody to tell that to. Diane's job was a total disappointment, or so she claimed, though she could never be specific. She mentioned getting a master's in something, or learning to make jewelry, but that might be too complicated. At home, she ate frozen Snickers bars in bed. She made Kool-Aid every night and chugged it from the pitcher. I hadn't seen Diane in her underwear in months, or her bare shoulders or her pretty chest, or her pale, round thighs; she said she was flab, pure Jell-o; she said her potbelly hung over the waist of her skirt. At night she'd put on her big yellow sweatshirt that came down to her knees; she'd pull the hood up over her head and tie the string and get into bed and turn off the lights. It got so bad that I couldn't even kiss her—she'd laugh or cover her lips and say, "I have to wax my mustache." We had more money now, and sometimes we discussed doing something new, either kids or a new house; neither one felt like the natural thing, but what were we going to do next? Something was missing. We needed the next phase, and we needed what was missing to get to the next phase. I didn't know whether to be worried or not.
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Copyright© 2000 by Matthew Klam
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