The Much Needed Vacation

Sarah sat by the window all day, staring down at the people coming and going. Each and every one seemed a mystery in passing. Each harboring secrets. Private lives. Private places. Some of these quite innocent, their sins so small, yet preoccupying them...even becoming them. Some dark, and to be forever unspoken, possessing them. Who is who when you walk a busy city street? She scribbled little thoughts in her journal now and then. She drew a little picture of a butterfly. She stared at it blankly as she made the patterns on the wings in little inked dots. She wrote the words "He's dead now" beneath it. She made a list of errands to run, six or seven items. Get groceries. Pack bags. Get train ticket. A one-way ticket. Somewhere far away. Somewhere near the sea. Get a bathing suit. A red one. A straw hat. Beneath all that she wrote, "It wasn't my fault, you know." She closed her book. and stared out the window again. She sighed several times while massaging her bare feet. She ran her fingers between her toes. She pressed into the ball of each foot deeply with her thumbs. She took five minutes addressing each foot. And then she slipped on her shoes. "I really need to go now", she said to her husband, as she stepped gingerly over his dead body, and closed that door behind her.

Sarah stared out the window as the train rumbled through the rugged mountains of West Virginia and through the small and dreary coal mining towns that dotted the area. One kind of nowhere after another. A woman hanging clothes on the line. Young bare chested boys playing along the tracks waving wildly as the train whizzed by. The woman beside her was sleeping, and every now and then began to slump over toward her. She seemed about Sarah's age, maybe a few years younger. A red-head with freckled shoulders. When she first sat down she had said her name was Candy. Sarah looked over at her. She was slender but shapely. The kind of woman many men might see as candy. Sarah turned to stare out the window again and was startled by the sudden blackness as the train entered a tunnel through the mountainside. The overhead lights came on. Candy suddenly sat up with a startled look. "Oh, my God! Where are we?" "We're going through a tunnel." Sarah said calmly. Suddenly they were in broad daylight again. "I hate tunnels. It's like being buried alive or something. Or it's like you are going to hell." Candy said. "Well," Sarah replied, "I can't say whether you are going to hell or not, but that was just a tunnel." "I just wanna go to the coast." Candy said. "I wanna just lay in the sun and drink pina coladas, and swim with the dolphins." Sarah nodded, "Yes, I want to see the ocean again myself." "I guess I am really just running away'", Candy continued. "Reality sucks sometimes. I just wanna be a mermaid in the day time, and a lounge lizard at night." Sarah nodded again, and laughed, "Yep, sounds like a plan all right." Candy gestured to Sarah's diamond ring. "So, you're hitched, huh?" Sarah looked down at her hand, realizing she still was wearing her wedding ring. "No. it was my mother's. I just wear it when I am traveling alone. It keeps the guys away." Candy smiled. "That's a cool idea. Don't get me wrong, I like guys, and all that, but some of them are such creeps, you know?" Sarah nodded, and thought about her husband. Their dismal emotionless life together. It was such a waste of time. She stared out the window at the changing countryside. West Virginia was behind her. She thought of her husband on the floor with a bullet in his head. It couldn't have been suicide. There was no gun to be found. But it wasn't a break-in either. Nothing was out of place. She thought about the people he worked with. Maybe one of them hated him even more than she had. Maybe Carl. Carl was always flirting with her. She even encouraged it, even though he was as much a jerk as her husband. The thought now disgusted her. To be so hungry for attention as to encourage the likes of Carl. Maybe Carl killed him. Maybe he will be caught and thrown in jail. Now that would make for a very twisted happy ending. Her husband dead, Carl in jail.

Candy just kept talking. The men she had been with. The let downs. The guy who turned out to be gay, but was looking for a girl closet to hide in. The kid who said he was 18, but really he was 16. The one man who seemed to really love her, but it turned out he was married, and the whole thing was a lie just to get in her pants. Sarah turned to look at Candy babbling on. "So, how did that one end?" Sarah said. Candy turned to look at Sarah. "Do you promise not to tell?" Sarah nodded. "Pinky handshake?" Candy said holding out her little finger. "Pinky handshake", Sarah said, locking fingers with her. "I killed him this morning. I went to his apartment. I was going to tell his wife, but she wasn't home I had my uncle's 38. So,I just pointed it as his head, pulled the trigger, and walked out." Sarah's eyes widened as the words sank in. "Please don't tell, ok?" Candy said, her eyes beginning to well up and spill. Sarah cupped Candy's face in her hands, wiping away the tears with her thumbs. "I won't tell on you. In fact, I would have done the same thing. Let's go down to the club car and have a drink." "I don't have any money." Candy sobbed. Sarah took her hand. "You don't need any money, honey. It's all on me."

The End