Private Citizens

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They were on a day trip, a nothing, the four of them in the hot car speeding north. All the passing and now-passed road looked faint through the filthy windows, which threw dull light onto their laps. It was ten A.M., any promise of an early start already squandered, and look, peach weather. In Sunday traffic it would be another fifty minutes, sitting still, rushing forward, all facing the same way. A fleck of fuzz stuck in Linda’s eyelashes. The searing of leatherette in succulent air, a baguette rebaking in its paper sleeve, green grapes beginning to wrinkle, disks of lemon browning in iced tea. Nobody was getting enough sleep. They drove on to light and green water, sun, rest, afternoon. Last weekend before fall.

So then what? Why, Linda thought, of every possible experience, the beach? It was a failure of the imagination, budgeted and scheduled. They’d get there, trek miles down the shore until Cory deemed a spot quiet enough to lay their towels, even though by noon it would be as crowded as anywhere else. They would lie still among pasty bodies and feel tired. Will would bitch about the glare on his phone while everyone waited for him to sober up and drive them back home. And nobody had told her Henrik would be here.

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