"Shit, there it is!" Greg yelled, looking in the rearview mirror.
"I heard that!" Inky called. It's always good to know there's a nine-year-old girl keeping score in the back when the tension's high.
We non-drivers should strive to remain deferential until the vehicle in which we are riding comes to a complete stop, but after five blocks, my anxiety got the better of me and I timidly suggested that we should find a place to pull over.
"Sure, if you can tell me where," Greg snapped. I'd have done the same, were I piloting a toy-littered rental car in gridlock, an hour after I was to have called my brother to tell him where we'd be spending the night in this wholly unfamiliar country.
Opatija bled into Ika, as I thumbed furiously through the Rough Guide, trying to determine if there was a Tourist Info in Opatija — a former fishing village that, like Ika, now qualifies as a seaside resort in its own right. Amazingly, it not only has one, it's on the public pier, right next to a parking lot, where a car was pulling out. Not only that, it was staffed by a helpful young woman in cat's eye glasses, who gamely got on the horn to see if there was any farm in a two-hundred mile radius willing to accommodate us on such short notice.
"Hey, as far as I'm concerned," I whispered to Greg, as our new friend dialed yet another possibility, "should Sam and Beth decide to sit this one out, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for us to stay here."
"Opatija was one of the places Sam said he'd consider driving to."
"Really?" How had this information slipped past me? Had I been too fixated on a farm stay to hear anyone else's
If we were getting on the landlady's nerves, she was far too discreet to let it show. suggestions?
Apparently so. After the ensuing four days of sunny, ice-cream-filled sightseeing and mercurial kid dynamics in balmy, palmy Opatija, Beth let it slip that I was the only one crazy enough to have seen vacation possibilities in a barnyard.
"But only because of the kids!" I defended myself, splashing some more of the locally produced truth serum into wineglasses borrowed from the landlady, an upstanding fireplug. If we were getting on her nerves, she was far too discreet to let it show, unlike the icy male half of the Austrian fitness-buff couple lodged next door. He gave Sam detailed directions for an all-day hike he erroneously claimed would not be too challenging for a party such as ours.
"Stop worrying about that jerk," Greg commanded, when I fretted about ruining our athletic neighbors' romantic weekend. "Who does he think he is? He only thinks he gets to act that way because he doesn't have kids!"
Exactly.
©2007 Ayun Halliday and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Ayun Halliday is author of The Big Rumpus and No Touch Monkey! and the popular zine East Village Inky. She is a columnist for Bust and a frequent contributor to Babble. Visit AyunHalliday.com.
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