Angus comes back with candles and matches that he’s sweet-talked from Pete’s neighbors. Lighting a couple, he insists that Pete hear out his business plan.
Hanh whimpers, “Where’s my mommy? I want her.”
“Just a minute, guys,” Angus says. “Let’s do this storm right, eh? Whip up some hot chocolate like the Aztecs did. Electricity? Pshhht. I don’t care if we have to use cold fusion.”
They pull out every blanket Pete owns, and Pete cuddles in with Sasha close, holding Hanh’s hand with his free one. Angus, meanwhile, has retrieved a dry-erase board from his trunk and set it up, in the flicker of candlelight, like they are all in some Neolithic cave boardroom together, kids and adults alike. It might be as bad as February was, but it isn’t nearly, because he’s not alone. Sasha asks whether the hot chocolate is ready, and Angus tousles her hair. “Just listen up first.” VACATION REDUX, he has written at the top. “So. . when you want to take a vacation, you plan it out, right? Figure out the itinerary, go to a tour guide or a travel agent. Take the kinks out, et cetera. But what’s the worst part of any vacation?”
The kids and Pete shiver-shrug.
“When it ends, of course,” Angus declares. “‘Vacation Redux’ is the service that makes sure it never ends. We store your pictures, sit down with you and help you relive the memories. It’s multisensory. We’re not just talking about inflicting slides on the gaybors.” Pete’s neighbors, the ones Angus procured a candle from, are, in fact, gay, though how this is relevant under these circumstances — burrowed in these blankets, trembling on the couch, teeth jerkily percussive as they ride out his rant — is ultradubious. “We’ll figure out what your favorite dish was on the trip and make it for you to the chef’s exact specs. We’ll bring on smells — lake aroma, eucalyptus, you name it. We’ll have sounds. The blues you heard down in N’awlins? Or let’s say you went to Maine. Heck, it will be like there’s a loon in the room.”
“I’ll say there is,” chatters Pete.
That afternoon, they decide to venture out to try to find something warm to eat, someplace warm to sit. The car, to begin with. The moment they step outside, it is disconcerting, the rain-rattled ice, the air a shell of silence punctuated by the continuous sound of branches cracking and hurtling downward. The trees are crystal, spruce and pine tipping, top-heavy, as if a film of them is paused in mid sway. With every light gone, afternoon feels like evening, with night coming on. Down into town they drive. It’s ghostly and grim. The heat has come on in the car, and Pete creeps at a steady five mph. Ignoring Angus’s impatience makes it easy to tune out the line of cars behind him. Screw that, not with just one but two (three?) kids in the car. Even the gas stations are all out, silent. The one that’s open has a line of cars stretching an eighth of a mile up the road.
“This is nuts,” says Angus. “Pull over anyway.” He runs into the minimart, returning with crumbled Lorna Doones; they’ve sold out of water, flashlights, batteries, wood, hot chocolate.
“When did we arrive in the Third World?” Angus scowls. “Good thing I’m the King of Exact Change.” He offers Pete a Doone.
“Maybe for the kids?” Pete says.
They can see lights in the distance, and Pete heads toward them. A single string of stores on the main drag has, through some fusion of fluke and dumb luck, managed to keep its juice flowing.
“Run. . a. . round. . and. . scream. . a. . lot!” shivers Sasha. She used to not be able to say it. Maybe the cold makes it easier.
“What’s that?” asks Angus.
“It’s a place we go,” explains Pete. “Where we first met Hanh, actually. Remember, guys?” He eases into the lot, jam-packed with cars, like the site of a rock show.
“And here’s the thing,” Angus says, to him the ride merely a temporary hiatus in his business proposal. “Let’s say the vacation didn’t work out. Let’s say you got food poisoning from the raw oysters the second night. Well, then you get to decide whether you want to relive it or — what is this place?”
They pile out and go in, enveloped by the light and the din. Familiar faces — lots of families, sharing their horror stories, laughing, rolling their eyes. Tru Renfro is in her element: running around making coffee and tea and decaf and cocoa. Kids are playing in their jackets, moving around, keeping warm. Pete gets them on the beverage line as if it’s just an ordinary day and he’s brought the kids here. Once he feels them settling a bit, he turns to Angus.
“‘Vacation Redux’?” Under ordinary circumstances, the idea might have seemed slightly eccentric, like most of his brother’s notions, noteworthy for its sheer audacity. Like it was not a good idea unto itself but in a slightly different world it would’ve been. With some tweaks to either the idea or the world. But here, with half the town gathered, trying to stay warm, keeping their chins even, it doesn’t seem like even a decent one. It seems demented.
“What do you think?” says Angus, tapping Pete on the shoulder. “Can we say ‘Best Concept Yet’? Can we say ‘What time do the banks reopen?’”
Pete’s catching more people he recognizes now. Martin Feldspar from Baldis Tool Rental. He greets a mother he remembers from playgroup. He’s looking around for others. Maybe Mrs. Dobbins will be here. He’s got one arm on each of the kids, leans down. “If we get separated,” he says, “let’s meet right next to the snail slide.” Then he turns to Angus. “I don’t think people want to endlessly relive their vacations,” he says. “I think they want to go on new vacations. They want to get back to work and make enough money so they can have a single vacation, just once, with someone they care about. And then they can relive that, sure. In their minds.”
Angus looks a bit stymied for a second, like a boxer whose chin just got grazed. “Kids, what do you think?” he says, dropping into an eye-to-ear squat with Sasha. It’s the closest he’s ever seen Angus get to her, reminiscent of when Pete destingered Esther on Halloween. But Pete had been comforting, hadn’t he? Angus looks slightly scary. Hunkered into this awkward crouch with his fiery sideburns, he looks like some clown that the place has hired for the day to keep the kids entertained, but who will cause about 5 % of them to wet themselves. “Do you like it when vacation is over? Or do you want to go back, keep your vacation going?”
“Keep it going,” says Sasha. Hanh shrugs. If this is his vacation, he wants it over ASAP.
“This is amazing,” Angus says, regaining his feet. “We’ve got it all set up. A ready-made test audience, here. People of all shapes and sizes. Kind of white and middle-class, but let’s face it, who will be availing themselves of this service anyway, right? What did you say the name of this place was again?”