Just As I Imagined It

"Rob, as soon as that seat belt light turns off, I want you to run as fast as you can."

That's when vacation started for me. It was exciting and seemed, albeit ridiculous, dangerous. There was a real possibility we could miss our connection. We had just landed in Atlanta and we had exactly 42 minutes to get to our connecting flight to Punta Cana. My brother had been nervously checking his watch and then looking at the departure time for our next flight for the last fifteen minutes. During our decent to Atlanta, we discovered, thanks to the map in the back of Sky Magazine, that our departure gate was the exact furthest spot you could get from our arrival gate. Add that to the fact that Atlanta's airport is massive, and the result is my brother stating the plan above.

The seat belt light turns off. I get up and run. Two rows. Everyone else on the plane piles in to the aisle ahead of me, putting an abrupt end to our hastily devised plan. I look back at my brother and his shoulders slump in defeat. We wait. After the plane finally deboards, the race begins anew. My family and I zig and zag through the other travelers in Terminal E. We get on a train and take it to terminal T, the other end of the airport. We all check our watches, our phones, any clock we can lock our eyes to. We get off the train, wheeling our luggage behind us as we continue to scurry through other travelers.

There it is. T42. We've arrived. We board and take our seats. In just over 3 hours, we'll be landing in paradise. The engines spin and scream. We take off from Atlanta and fly over the North Atlantic. Since I don't wear a watch and airlines require you to turn your cell phone off, I lose all sense of time in planes. Instead, I keep track of time by the number of pages I read. 160 pages later, we're touching down in Punta Cana.

We navigate through various lines, one of which includes paying a $10 entry fee to the country. That's correct. The Dominican Republic has a cover charge. It's fitting really. The entire country is one giant bar, essentially. After paying, we locate the shuttle to our resort, The Majestic Colonial, and get on. We nearly died no less than four separate times on that ride. Traffic laws are more aptly described as traffic suggestions in Punta Cana. Cars were veering into on coming traffic with no regard. My mother had the great fortune to be sitting shotgun on the shuttle. So, she had special exposure to each near death experience. Each time we all held our breath and made our peace with God, the shuttle driver would laugh and say something in Spanish. It would take a few hours after we arrived, but we would eventually find the humor in the situation.

We finally arrived at the resort about 2 hours after we landed. It was just as I imagined it. Open air, thatched roofs, palm trees, pools, fountains, drinks, everything. We checked in and went to our room. Upon entering my room, which I shared with my brother, I went immediately to the fridge, grabbed a beer, popped it, and proceeded to drink it. Only then, did I examine the room. One bottle of champagne, two beers, four bottles of water, two chocolate bars. Excellent. The beer, El Presidente, was pretty tasty. It was a welcome refreshment after the fate-tempting shuttle ride. I had arrived to the resort alive and El Presidente was my prize. The best part about my prize? It's restocked every morning.

After checking out the rooms, we all went to dinner. Each dinner is a buffet, and every buffet has a theme for the food that they prepare and serve. I don't recall what the theme was on this particular night, but it was delicious.

After dinner we retired to our rooms and went to bed.

The following morning we went to the beach. We stayed there all day. I finished reading No One Here Gets Out Alive and started reading Life, Keith Richards' memoir. There's something about the sea breeze and the rolling ocean that gives me the ability to burn through several books in a very short period of time. I love it. I could get used to this lifestyle. The Dominican is very laid back, very go-with-the-flow. Just like me.

The next day, we went to the beach for a few hours and then to the pool. My brother opted out of the pool. He was burned pretty badly on our second day on the beach. At the bar at the pool, I ordered my first drink in Spanish.

"Red Label y roca, por favor." Johnny Walker Red on the rocks.

Just then, a Pina Coloda is spilled at the bar right in front of me and a distinctly British voice cursed.

"Shit!"

She picked up the cup as my whiskey was being handed to me. She looked at me and apologized. She was striking. I have that moment in my memory like a snapshot. Like an instagram photo. Her hair was up in a ball behind her head, with a few strands down and curled behind her ears. Her eyes were a vibrant green forest that you could get lost in for days. She had freckles sprinkled like cinnamon across her face. Her cheek bones were pronounced, which gave way to a smile that could send you to heaven or hell. It was both mischievous and beautiful at once. It was punctuated on both ends by dimples and filled with teeth whiter than the sand on the beaches just feet from where we were standing. She was stunning.

"I didn't mean to get in your way," she said apologetically. I wasn't quite back to the situation yet. I was some where between her eyes and her freckles.

"Oh! No, it's completely fine. I spill drinks all the time."

What? Smooth, Rob.

"What are you drinking?" I'm still not over the accent. That accent gets me every time.
"Red Label."
"And?"
"Ice."
"You Americans and your whiskey. You're brave." If I wasn't already enamored with this girl, what she said next sealed the deal.

"Would you like a shot?"
"Absolutely! I'm buying."

This is funny because it's an all inclusive resort. She laughed. I think it was more because it was corny. I'll take it either way. We did a shot of rum and hung out at the bar for a while. Her name was Veronica. She was on vacation with her family to celebrate her finishing her graduate degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She has a Master of Music in Performance. She plays the piano. She wants to teach music. I explain to her why we're on vacation. My brother and I are both graduates. We're the first siblings in our family to both graduate from college. This vacation is a celebration of that. That and it's my parent's 30th wedding anniversary.

We kept drinking. We talked about music, college, what it was like in London, what it was like in Missouri, where she grew up, where I grew up, what we want to do when we grow up. The conversation moves from the pool to the liquor store to the beach. We take pulls from Dominican rum and continue talking as the sun sets in the Caribbean.

It's interesting. Although two people come from countries that are a world apart, they can still share similar experiences or struggles.

"Do you ever feel like your just floating along? All our lives we were working toward something. When your young, you work toward grammar school, then university. After that, then what? I went to get my graduate degree because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know what was next. I don't know how to handle that."

Grammar school. University. I love that. The accent strikes again.

"Just because you don't know how to handle something doesn't mean you aren't handling it right. I still don't know what I want to do. I'm 26. Sometimes I feel like you should have things figured by now. Other times I think, how boring would it be to have your life figured out when you're 26?"

She laughed, "That's one way of looking at it!"

We got up and walked down the beach to where the tide meets the sand, bottle in hand, still trading swigs. We talked more.

"I just got done reading this book about Jim Morisson, and I gotta tell ya'. I think The Doors are better than The Rolli..."

She kissed me. Mid sentence. As I was getting ready to bash what is arguably the best thing to come from the UK next to Posh Spice. She pulled back and looked at me. Her head was silhouetted against the dusk of the sky over the North Atlantic. At this time in the evening, it's difficult to tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. She smiled again, lighting up the dimples in her face.

"I've been wanting to do that for a few hours," she said. "C'mon, let's go. I should get back before my family starts worrying about me."

We walked back up the beach, leaving the bottle of rum in the sand. We parted ways by the pool. I went my way and she went hers.

The next morning I woke up with a slight hangover. Nothing I couldn't handle. Nothing a little El Presidente couldn't repair. Mid way through my drink I realized something. I don't have any way to get a hold of Veronica. I don't know her room number. I don't know her e-mail address. I don't even have a last name to go by. Neither does she. We must've been just drunk enough to not realize it. My only hope is that I run into her again - totally up to chance. I cross my fingers, then I finish my beer. We spend the day at the beach and the pool again. After dinner, where we had the Domincan's version of sushi and Asian pork, we went back to our rooms and went to bed. No sign of Veronica.

When I woke up, something was not right. I wasn't quite sure what it was yet, but it wasn't right. I went to the pool with my family. Fifteen minutes later, I'm sprinting from the pool to my room, past my red brother laying burned on the bed, and into the bathroom. I've been struck by the Scourge of the Dominican. Montezuma's Revenge. Without getting into too much detail, just know that it was hell. It was foul. It was 12 hours of something awful. It would eventually tear through my entire family in the next 36 hours. I stayed in for the rest of the day. Still no Veronica.

It rained the next day as the Scourge continued to rip through my family. On Sunday, we ate breakfast and checked out. The bellhop loaded our bags into the shuttle and we boarded. As the rest of the passengers took their seats, I looked out my window. I couldn't believe it. Walking up the stairs to the lobby was Veronica. She was wearing a fedora, but it was definitely her. She couldn't see me through the tinted glass of the shuttle windows. Even if she could, she was probably too far away to notice. I'll never see or hear from her again. It's okay, though. It was only one evening. A couple of hours. It was nothing. But, like all great things in the world - women and religion and the sky - you wonder about it. And you don't stop wondering about it.

It's okay. In about 160 pages, I'll be landing back in the States and this will all be a good story about a family vacation to the Dominican Republic. That is, if we survive the shuttle back to the airport.

Everything in this story is true. Except the part about Veronica. I completely made that up. I wanted to try my hand at fiction. I bet I had you going, though.