Weekend

It was hillbilly country. Guys with crossbows and camouflage jackets. A woman driving her car down a country road with her trunk open.

Quaint, but where the hell are we? Ben asked.

Rose had taken a wrong turn down a gravel road that led to an abandoned grain elevator. Ben insisted on taking her photograph in front of it.

It’s historic, he said.

It’s derelict, she said.

Like us, Ben said.

We’re not derelict, Rose protested. We’re vintage.

Like wine? said Ben.

More like this jacket, Rose said. It used to belong to my mother.

Ben consulted a map. She had driven north instead of south, twenty miles out of the way. After they found the right road, they drove directly to the cabin. The cabin was in a fishing camp, near a famous hiking trail. A charming Australian woman ran the camp; they liked her because she let them bring their dog, Binkie. They unloaded the car and took Binkie for a walk around the lake. A bird howled. They were city people: they didn’t know if it was an owl or a loon or something they’d never heard of.

Ben asked, Did you bring the bird book?

No. Sorry.

Did you know there’s a bird museum in town? He rattled a brochure. Maybe we can find out there.

They watched the sun set over the lake. The woods turned dark, then black. At the cabin Ben sat at the table and checked his e-mail and then read some newspapers online. Rose lolled in the big bed and tried to read something contemporary, but was bored by the angst of the characters, beautiful New Yorkers (one an ex-model) who whined on cell phones about whether or not to move to the suburbs. After a while she gave up on New York and picked up a novel by a writer from Sri Lanka, Romesh Gunesekera. Soon she was in another world...a boy became a gourmet cook...his master, Mr. Salgado, met his girlfriend when he stepped on her toe outside of a bookstore...a neighbor woman tried to kill her adulterous husband by rubbing chili powder all over him and was dragged off to jail...there was lots of cooking of fishballs and meat patties.

The novel consisted of small incident after small incident, beautifully described. She didn’t want to stop reading. She reluctantly got out of bed to make chicken sandwiches for dinner (she had roasted a chicken at home and brought it in an ice chest).

They sat shivering outside at a picnic table, eating sandwiches.

Look at that sky. Wouldn’t it be great to live here? asked Ben.

I’d quit my job in a heartbeat, said Rose. Like in a sitcom.

GREEN ACRES? MEN IN TREES?

We’d be the back-to-nature couple.

No money. No central heating. No indoor plumbing. Old magazines for toilet paper.

Sadly, we wouldn’t last that long. We like our mod cons, Rose said.

This cabin’s pretty snug. Maybe we could buy it.

Rose thought how nice it would be to live in the cabin and study birds, to record every bird in a special notebook. She’d start her lifetime bird list tomorrow.

No, wait. Tomorrow they were getting up early to go fishing. Sometimes they caught a fish. She wondered if she could combine fishing with birdwatching.

After dinner Rose returned to Sri Lanka, greedily reading. She fell asleep propped against pillows.

When the alarm went off at 6, she didn’t know where she was. Sri Lanka or a cabin in the woods. At this hour it was all the same.