HOLIDAY

I pull the car into the driveway of the stop ‘n’ shop just before you come into Santa Barbara. Joanna is next to me in the car, asleep. She looks even more beautiful asleep than when she is awake, and even then she is a wonder to look at. I don’t regret anything we have done in the short time we have been able to be together, except that because of her I had to lie to my wife.

 

Joanna wakes up. “Where are we?” she asks me.

 

In my twenty years as a legal consultant I must have traveled every mile of the highways of California, dealing with cases from Sacramento to San Diego, and I have never, ever, given anyone a ride before. Three days ago I made an exception. They say it never rains in Southern California, and mostly it doesn’t. When I was coming home from San Diego – to Santa Barbara, to my wife and my three kids – I saw Joanna, standing there alone, looking sad, at the entrance to the freeway. In the rain. With a little sign that said “Canada”. And I gave her a ride. Although I wasn’t going to Canada.

 

She got in and sat down next to me. “Hi! My name’s Joanna,” she said, smiling and looking into my eyes. And something lit up in me, something burning and freezing at the same time, and I felt like I was empty inside or I felt hungry. “David,” I said. “My name’s David," and I offered her my hand. She took it.

 

When we checked into the motel we made love on the floor even before we closed the door. Anyone could have looked in, or walked in, and found us. Over the next three days and nights we made love on practically every inch of the pale blue carpet, in the little kitchenette, in the shower and even on and in the bed.

 

“Honey? … It’s me … Yeah, everything … No, the case is going to go on for a few more days … What? … Of course I do … How are the kids? … Well, probably on Tuesday … I’ll ring you later … I love you honey …”

 

Besides making love we went out together. Holding hands. We ate ice-cream and cotton-candy at the fairground in Santa Monica, and I bought her a little pink teddy bear. She said she would always keep it, and named it “David”, after me. She kissed it, and then she kissed me.

 

Joanna is part Indian. For the last few months she has made a living making necklaces out of sea-shells she collects from the beach in San Diego.

“What do you think of them?” she asked me.

“They’re really pretty,” I said. “Especially when you wear them.”

 

My father always wanted me to be a lawyer, like he was. And I studied hard. No lawyer I know has worked on as many cases as I have over the last twenty years. I was a consultant to Barry Scheck on the O.J. Simpson case in LA, and it was mainly that job that earned me the money to buy the luxury beach house in Santa Barbara. Right on the beach. Every morning I go for a swim before a shower and breakfast. My wife comes into the bathroom with a big yellow towel, and hands it to me through the shower curtain. “Breakfast’s nearly ready,” she says.

 

On warm summer mornings like this one. Except that now I am sitting in a coffee-shop with Joanna, who is more or less awake, and is poking at her ice-cream sundae with a long, thin spoon, looking out at the growing traffic on the freeway.

“Come to Canada with me, David,” she says. “We can be happy. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“I know. I know you haven’t done anything like this before.”

 

“I can’t go with you, Joanna. There’s something you ought to know,” I said nervously. And I told her my secret. “I probably haven’t got long to live. A rare heart disease. My heart could stop at any moment. No one else knows about this. And I think I ought to stay with my wife until that happens.” And it is true, and it’s why I work so hard to earn extra money to look after my wife and kids when I’m gone.

 

I don’t know whether Joanna believed me or not. “I’m sorry,” she said, but I didn’t know if this was about my heart or about me not going to Canada with her. She kisses me for the last time. I had never felt sadness in a kiss before. Then she thinks it’s better to leave; she’s upset, and she gets up in a hurry to go and hitch a lift in the car park, and I sit in the coffee shop watching her through the window.

 

A car slows down after about five minutes. She is about to get in when she turns to wave to me and blow a kiss. And I rush out of the coffee shop towards her as fast as I can. “Wait, Joanna!” And she stops and comes walking towards me, smiling her beautiful smile.

 

“Joanna, “I say. “You forgot David.” And she takes the little teddy bear from my hands with tears welling up in her eyes. “I’ll never forget David,” she says, “Even if I leave him behind, I’ll never forget him.”

 

Joanna is now on the freeway, on the way to LA probably. Soon I will leave the coffee shop and I’ll be home in ten minutes or so. I will put the key into the door to the house and my wife will shout to me as she always does from the kitchen. “Davie? That you honey? Are you hungry?” And in an hour or so I’ll be back at work in a busy office. I need this. Joanna couldn’t understand me, but I can forgive her for that.

 

But for the moment I’m sitting here in the coffee shop watching the traffic build up on the highway. Eight thirty. Soon it will be impossible to move on the roads leading into LA. If you sat everyday in traffic that had lines sometimes ten miles long, in smog, listening to irritated people honking their car horns and shouting at each other, and then you went into a dull courtroom or a dusty library, then you, too, would know that sometimes it feels so, so, so, so good to take a holiday.

(First published in Ópio magazine, vol. 2.1, 2000/2001)