Charlotte's Vacation

At the Vancouver YVR airport, Charlotte checked her boarding pass to Cancun, Mexico. She rubbed her temples. Her perennial headache threatened to return, despite taking two Advil tablets before leaving home. The parent next to her sang and bounced a toddler on his lap. Charlotte hadn’t slept last night, not just because of the flight, but her sleep had been getting worse, even with the sedative, Immovane. 

A few weeks ago, her doctor strongly advised her to take a relaxing vacation and threatened her with heart attack and other risks from overwork. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to take a vacation, but she’d needed to get her revised company, Meta Green Solutions, onto better ground. 

Lars, her new assistant, for all the worth of his university environmental studies, moved slower than cows, a favoured metaphor of her father’s, and the company would probably fall down around him. 

She texted him. “Did you contact Erik Smithson yet.?” He responded immediately. “Yes. He’s happy with the proposal.” Lars had come up with the branding and marketing for Erik’s umbrella recycling business. She had to admit somehow, despite Lars’ glacial movements he got things done, but she felt like the hare running frenzied circles around the turtoise.

Needing distraction from the now crying toddler, she went to a quieter area and called him. “Look Lars, I’m really sorry to saddle you with the whole business. I shouldn’t be going away…”

His voice came on after a few moments. “I’m not going to ask you to drop your trip. You’ve been working hard, and I’ve seen you checking out the Mexican vacation deals. You’ll come back refreshed and better than ever.”

She knew what he was thinking, but wasn’t saying. ‘Trust me, I won’t screw this up’. 

“Did you see my list of follow-ups?” 

“Of course, it’s up on my screen right now.”

Lars is careful and methodical, she told herself after she hung up. But at fifty-eight, this business may be the last chance she’d have. After a long hill of work, she’d rejuvenated her original business that had folded up along with her marriage of thirty years. The final straw had been when Candy, her daughter had sided with Don, her ex, and blamed her for being far too controlling. That had hurt, since she’d wanted to be a successful role model for her daughter. Candy would side with Lars for sure.

“Last call for Flight CL257,” the flight attendant spoke into the microphone. She hastily texted Candy with an airplane and tropical beach emojis. “Finally taking a vacation. Love you, Mom.” 

“For real???”

Charlotte sent a photo of her boarding pass. 

“Enjoy, Mom!!! and a happy face emoji”

Charlotte buckled herself in and distracted herself by watching a movie, but at ten in the morning, her mind kept going back to her business. Her head, neck and back ached by the time the plane landed and she disembarked down the steps into the sweltering tarmac enhanced heat. Jubilant laughter and loud chatter of fellow tourists followed her onto the bus, with blasting AC and pop music. 

At Mandela Resort, several exuberant tourists got off with her, and she determined to beeline to the reception and up to her room, which she prayed would be quiet, but a handsome smiling Mexican named Josei greeted them, with a tray full of champagne flutes. “Your rooms will be ready in fifteen minutes. In the meantime we wish to welcome you, Mandala style”. Everyone oohed and ahhed and grabbed a drink, and Charlotte took the last one. She could only hope mixing it with her medicine would allow for a deep slumber. 

After tortuous long minutes, she entered her room, and collapsed on the bed to shrieks of laughter and loudspeaker base-heavy music from the pool below and counted thousands of sheep. Giving up on a nap, she dragged herself down to the dining room. 

She sat alone at a table, and ignored the waiter who came by to serve her wine and ask impertinent questions about when Senor would arrive. After dinner, she sat at a piano bar and drank a large brandy and relaxed into the Sinatra and Nat King Cole crooning, and prayed the pool above her room would close before she retired to bed.

It didn’t, but she fell asleep, and woke up around nine the next morning. The best sleep she’d had in ages. Maybe the vacation could be restorative. On the dresser she found a coupon for a free massage. Before she could change her mind, she entered that ubiquitous alternative spa world, and breathed in the spring herbal mist and let the babbling creek and chirping bird sounds soothe her, and surrrendered herself to the pain/pleasure pressure of the masseuer’s hands and elbows.

During brunch, she surprised herself with an appetite, and marvelled she’d forgotten for a blessed two hours about her business. She texted a photo of herself smiling to her daughter. “Relaxed after a spa and massage treatment” and a smiley face. 

“Is that really my workaholic mom??” Candy texted back. 

“Sure is, next time I’d love for you to join me.”

She smiled when Candy’s heart response popped up.

Later in the afternoon, she waded into the gleaming turquoise ocean, and floated, lifted and moved by the waves. Could life be carefree and not the relentless fight for survival, her father had impressed on her? Refreshed from her swim, she reclined on a beach chair in the partial shade of a grass roof cabana, and opened up her phone, thinking she’d send Lars a photo of the ocean.

Alarm filled her, when she saw three messages from him. 

“The Goodplay company are pulling out. They’ve uncovered a problem with their financing and say they can’t afford to continue with us. I offered them the twenty percent reduction, but they wouldn’t take it. As I’ve suggested in my memos, they’re struggling.” 

Those email memos, she’d glanced at and closed, hoping her long time business friend, John would turn his situation around, as he had in the past. Tension burned in her forehead and the back of her neck. John’s company had started out recycling batteries decades ago before environmentalism and sustainability were catch words. He’d responded to her old school knocking on doors and they’d supported each other longer than kids like Lars had been alive. Sixty percent of her business came from them. 

Charlotte texted back. “Tell John, the CEO I’ll phone him.” John did everything in person, but surely in this case he’d take a call.

“John dropped in today personally.”

“You should have contacted me earlier,” she texted. 

“I did, the minute, we ended the meeting.”

Damn, Lars did everything correctly, but he didn’t have the gumption, to rise up in emergencies. He was too methodical. Kids these days, pampered and protected had no idea of what it took to keep the money flowing. Her mind kicked into high gear. She’d almost lulled herself into relaxation, but ‘rest was for the wicked,’ another favourite of her father’s.

“I’ll fly back straight away, Lars.”

“Charlotte, I’m so sorry to spoil your vacation with this news, but please have faith in me. I’m working on the list you gave me, and I believe there’s a couple with good potential. We’ve been overextended with Goodplay for a while. This might be for the best.”

“Lars, we can’t afford to lose Goodplay.” Need she add the obvious, that she’d have to let him go if they lost their largest customer.

Charlotte phoned Goodplay and pleaded with John’s secretary to put him on the phone, but was unsurprised to hear John wasn’t taking calls but would be happy to meet with her in person. What was wrong with John? A crisis on his hands and he still avoided the phone. Sighing, she set up an appointment for the next day and informed Lars.

“Okay, see you soon,” came back his response.

Charlotte raced back to her hotel room and looked for a flight online on her laptop. Everything was full. There were no flights available until three days later. That’s when her flight would be going back. Planes hawked seats all the time, but of course came up blank when she needed one. After ages, she got an agent on the phone. 

 “Sorry, but your ticket is nonrefundable and nonexchangeable.”

“I don’t need a refund. I need a whole new ticket. One way to Vancouver.” 

“Sorry, nothing is available.”

“Can you reroute me through the States?

“Sorry, no.”

“That’s impossible. You can’t have every possible flight full.”

“But mam, we do and there are waiting lines.”

She made more calls and none of the sorry personal could help her and none had thought to tell her that Canada Air had walked off on strike that day, and passengers had scrambled onto the other flights. Renting a car and driving over the border into the States, she might get a flight out of San Diego or someplace, but if her bad luck followed her up there, she’d be home even later. 

She went down and paced in the lounge, willing an airline seat to become available on her phone, but no such luck. The sun glared through the bamboo wall sectionals and Mexican crows raucously snapped stolen food into their beaks. Unlike Lars, they understood grit and competition. 

 At the bar, she ordered a triple martini and still standing, drained it down her throat. Taking a seat, she responded to the stocky man in the Hawaiian shirt with tourist babble and strained laughter, and imbibed more drinks. 

 She linked arms with the Hawaiian-shirt senor and they made their way into the dining room, where staff filled up the buffet containers with dinner. Aromas of roast beef and spicy quacamole nauseated her, and she plead a headache, and promised to find him later, and hurried to her room.

She amped up the air conditioner and collapsed into a drunken slumber.

A few hours later, she awoke, and stood under a cold shower, until she felt cognizant. Wrapping herself in the large white Mandala housecoat, she checked her phone. Still no available flights. Several more text messages from Lars, but she couldn’t bear to hear more bad news from him, and she didn’t want to think about how she’d have to let him go. Maybe he could get one of those better jobs at the larger companies or even in the government that had courted him after school. 

Getting into a summer dress and putting on a light sweater, she left her room, and at the bar grabbed a large gingerale and peanuts, and followed a lantern-lit path to the beach, and sat on one of the left out beach chairs. The curling crescents of phosporesent foam crashed into deep dark wave wells. Just the fate of everything bright in her life. 

Why had John waited until the bitter end, and especially when she was on vacation, to drop this on her? But Lars was right. The writing had been on the wall for a long time; she just hadn’t wanted to see it. If Goodplay couldn’t make it, her company had even less of a chance. 

 Lars had obviously attempted to mollify her with the prospect of potential leads. Lots of flash and little substance, was what bright-eyed youngsters came up with these days. Craving an alcoholic drink, but too lazy to walk to the bar, she leaned back and closed her eyes. With nothing else to do, she gave herself over to the rhythmic swell and crash of waves for several minutes. Her eyes flickered open to the multitude of light pinholes in the black expanse above her. 

How many thousands or millions of light years to the nearest galaxy? Not only businesses, but lives and empires and civilizations had risen and fallen in that time. Her business didn’t matter much in such schemes, but it had been her world and its failing devastated her. She stared out into the vastness of the dark sea, and smelt the salty ocean air, and felt grateful for the relative quiet from the other tourists who preferred the pools and bars and resort evening activity venues.

Walking along the edge of the incoming tide, she turned and watched the tidal waves obliterate all trace of her footsteps. Maybe if she hadn’t gone on vacation she could have avoided the demise of her company. All her life, she’d wanted to impress her father with her business acumen and achievements, but he’d passed when her marriage and first business had gone under. Did he look down on her with compassion or with the old ‘constructive criticism’?

She picked up an abandoned plastic shovel and scooped up sand and flung it into the sea. It might be as pointless, but she determined to be different from her father, and try to keep Lars in the company, if she could keep it going. Bracing herself for more bad news, she pressed on his message.

“Charlotte, I have signed up two companies today, and I’ve met with John again. He’s interested in some ideas I proposed to reformat some aspects of his business. There have been some issues, but we’ll talk later.” and then another note. “I’m aware there aren’t any available flights for you for a few days. Sorry about that. I know how much you wanted to get back.”

Charlotte took a breath and put her hand up to her heart. Had she restrained him from developing his potential with all her fear and myopic micromanagement? With his slow speech and manners, he’d accomplished what all her busy energy took months to do. She burrowed her bare toes into the fine soft sand and felt the cool waters of the Gulf of Mexico lap over her ankles, and thanked the Universe for providing, in spite of herself.