E12. Lou Reed’s Nephew’s Narrator Takes a Vacation

It took several days to adjust, but after half a week on the beach—whipped by the sun and wind—I found myself empty-headedly enjoying life.

I had promised Renata for three hundred and thirty-one straight days that I would take a break and was finally making good on my promise. I turned off my email, told Ulugbek to text if he needed me—knowing he wouldn’t—and unplugged. We were on vacation, our first in years, far from my rented cube.

We enjoyed ourselves. I slept through the night. We walked on the beach. I looked over at Renata in the pool chair next to mine as she slept—her small frame held a heart like a hummingbird, and she rarely slept during the day—and wondered why we didn’t do this more often.

We had an elegant division of labor. She knew the names of all the trees and flowers that lined the streets of our neighborhood, while I stored the guitar riffs of thousands of hard rock songs for rapid identification when they came on in the half dozen restaurants where we ate most of our meals. I explained to her that Black Sabbath sounded diabolical because Tony Iommi had the tips of his fingers sheared off in an industrial accident—forcing him to tune his guitar strings loose like jump ropes—while she convinced me that even a flower, the gauche begonia, could be tacky, with its corny colors and rough, mannered foliage.

It took several days to adjust, but after half a week on the beach—whipped by the sun and wind—I found myself empty-headedly enjoying life.

One evening we stood for half an hour outside a pet store in a beach town north of Fort Lauderdale, watching a pair of teacup chihuahua’s wrestle in shredded newspaper. Renata had an uncomfortable but attractive sunburn and her tight, professional bun—which was beginning to show faint streaks of gray—had fallen into a sloppy ponytail. We were clutching ice cream cones.

“I just saw the most sublime thing on the beach,” Lou Reed’s Nephew said, jarring me from my stupor. That he had suddenly appeared, here, more than a thousand miles from our cubes, was so unexpected that my mind (relaxed as it was) found no choice but to accept it as natural.

“The sunset?” I asked, guessing at what he had seen.

“The sun sets in the west,” he said. “I saw a young man throwing up.”

“Gross,” I said. I looked around me. Renata was gone. I had been talking about Lou Reed’s Nephew for months. About his odd magnetism, his blithe confidence, and his seeming lack of concern about the future and the feelings of others.

“I can’t tell if you admire him or despise him,” Renata said. I couldn’t either and I needed her to help me decide. Where was she?

“You’d think so, but I was sitting on the beach, just now—at twilight—feeling sorry for myself,” Lou Reed’s Nephew said. “Because of the sun. The sun doesn’t cheer me up. It defeats me. It asks so much more than I can deliver.”

“I am not surprised.”

“I was sitting there, at what news crews call magic hour, and a family of four walked by. Parents and two spindly pre-teen boys. They were at that skeletal, emaciated stage. They had concave sternums, like they’d never survive to adulthood.”

“I know the stage,” I said. I could picture Lou Reed’s Nephew at this stage.

“Then, as they traipsed past me, one of the boys lost a step, turned to the side and deposited a gray waterfall of vomit into the receding surf. His mother looked back, unimpressed. No one missed another step, like it was the most natural thing in the world.”

“This affected you deeply?”

“It did, oddly, but I think I know why.”

“I’m sure you have a theory.”

“A theory, exactly,” Lou Reed’s Nephew said. “My theory is that the beach has been all used up. In art and ads and greeting cards …”

“And screensavers?”

“Yes. In screensavers. We can’t even see the beach; it’s been made to serve so many purposes. But young men casually throwing up? Totally open.”

“Uncharted territory.”

“Yes. I wish I’d taken a picture though,” Lou Reed’s Nephew said with some regret. “I need a new screensaver.”

Renata reappeared and gripped my hand. I turned to introduce her, but Lou Reed’s Nephew was already gone except for a whiff of sickly sea air.