Too Much Information?

Doink!

“Honey, I thought we agreed: no phones, right?”

“Right, sorry.” She starts rooting through her bag.

Breathe. This spring-break vacation is what you’ve worked for; this has been your focus since your first semester results, a 7% increase from last year’s end-of-course performance but still, pitifully, only 24% proficient. Breathe. Last year, you did not hold this position, so administration should be thrilled with the increase; but still, that nag: the State’s prediction of student growth, for “educator accountability,” yielded a -3.

I made those students dumber.

Breathe. Listen. Nothing, save the far off cry of terns, or boobies: Caribbean sea birds circling, diving for dinner, somewhere, their cries carried by a Venezuelan butterfly’s wing-flap. Nothing, save the slightly discernible tide, natural ambience we try to recreate with sound machines; but open your eyes, and look, now: sand the color of fresh snow, water the aquamarine of your bride’s eyes, the very painting we try to recreate through screensavers, or computer wallpaper, is at present all yours. Now close your eyes, and breathe from the diaphragm. Cleanse your lungs of old-school dusty ducts with eco-fresh palm air, that which we try to recreate through purifiers.

Be present.

Eliminate the we. Right now, and finally, you and Christyn are one. You are oceans apart from them, the them whom your wife, more particularly, fears, given (especially) the political climate, but coupled with her devotion to crime television.

The customer at the Royal Farms with the two guns, one on each hip, the familiar red baseball cap and the LIVE FREE OR DIE t-shirt. You shielded Christyn in a big-man embrace, though your muscled arms felt slight.

The window-tinted, modified-exhaust low rider riding the bumper of her Prius, its bass shaking her windows like a mild seismographic detection. Her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel; her aquamarine eyes grayed as they bounced off the rearview. You caressed her knee.

Breathe, darling.

Motherfucker, she seethed through clenched teeth. She gave the rearview the finger.

That’s not going to help anything, you mumbled, and looked through your own sideview, bracing for the emergence of a trench-coated brigand with a semi-automatic.

And you felt slight, big man in a Prius.

There was also that man at Disney, the man in line as you waited for the tram to take you back to the parking lot with your wife and your respective children; the man who grew hostile towards an elderly couple who were not moving fast enough, you thought.

“They should have burned you at Auschwitz, you damned kike! You and your Jew wife,” the man screamed.

Your oldest son looked at you. “Dad, you should do something,” he said.

Man up for the kid, or defer so the kid keeps a father?

Fortunately (finally), security intervened. Thank God it wasn’t another father; that would have made you feel slight, big man with his boys.

So, fear. You both feel it: (in addition to your job status), you fear your inability to protect, and she fears them. So because, as a result, you are also the one called upon to answer the door rung by a them, even if you are in the most remote part of your house, her request for a doorbell camera for Christmas was the perfect gift. Practical.

“Hope our house isn’t too old for this newfangled gadget,” I said, preparing for installation. Newfangled. I actually said newfangled for an advancement that our younger neighbors have had for years. My wife and I can’t even comprehend the route to “the Cloud.”

“You want, we can hire an electrician.”

The straightest route to emasculation, this was. I gave her an amazed look. “Pshaw,” I dismissed. “Kid’s play.”

Fortunately, after four separate (covert) conversations with broken-Englished representatives, my Alpha-male doggedness yielded fruit. “Honey, go open the door.”

Doink! went her phone, which she had left by the sink.

“Honey, you hear that?” I yelled. “Now, ring the bell.”

She rang the bell.

“Identify yourself, interloper,” I demanded through my own phone, looking at her crystal clear, full-color image at the center of the panoramic view of the porch.

“Avon calling,” she giggled.

Yes, she actually said Avon calling.

***

 Doink!

“HONEY!”

“Sorry, it’s underneath all this…here it is.” She pulls her phone from her beach bag.

“Why do you even have it here, on the beach?”

“Okay, okay, I just…” She pauses. “I was hoping to hear maybe from Kiley, but…honey? Honey, look at this.” She cups the phone to darken the image, and there, on our porch, is what appears to be a man. North Carolina April showers fill the audio; rain is cascading off the eaves from the flooded gutters and I can barely see beyond our property on either side of the figure.

But, the figure. Tall, slim; sodden trench coat, dripping bucket rain hat, head bowed.

“I can’t recognize…should I ask who it is?” I ask.

“”But he might think we’re there.”

“Isn’t that what we want?”

“Not if he’s there to kill us.”

Well, she does have a point.

Doink! He rings the bell again.

“Who would be out in that rain? Okay, ask.” She impatiently pats my leg. “Ask who it is, but don’t tell him we’re on vacation.”

“So, you want us to be home, then? If he’s there to kill us, he won’t leave.”

“But if he knows we’re away…what if he’s there to rob us? Then what?”

“I’ll just ask who it is.” I go to press the microphone on her screen, but pause. “Wait, he’s…honey, did you shut the blinds?”

“I…I’d like to think I did. Sure, of course I did. I always do, when we’re—”

“I think he might be looking in the windows. He just drifted out of view.”

“Well, STOP HIM. Ask who it is!”

Breathe. My heart is staccato. The Grenada sun is ten degrees hotter than it was two minutes ago.

“Identify yourself, interloper.” I make my voice sound menacing, like Darth Vader.

She slaps my arm. “Are you serious right now?” she whispers.

What? I mouth, but it works, I think. Slenderman comes back into view.

Doink!

“Why isn’t the interloper identifying himself?” She is practically panting. She is digging her nails into my bicep, which I am now flexing but I am not certain why.

“I repeat: identify yourself.” This time, my voice is more of a growl.

And we are now at a standoff. The tranquility of our island retreat accentuates the torrential rains, 2,000 miles away, and there our man stands as we huddle on the white sands, cupping the phone in our trembling hands,

and then the man glances at the door.

We hear him shake the handle; we hear the door rattle.

We see the man turn. He descends the steps, and fades into the rain.

Christyn is panting, close to hyperventilating. Admittedly, though not to her, I too am jellied.

“Think we should go home early?” she asks.

Knowing our retreat is ruined, big man doesn’t have the strength to pacify.