Vacationland

Amanda discovered three things about Maine in her first afternoon.

There were too many trees.

There were not enough cell towers.

And her cousin’s definition of “a place to stay” meant a loft above the camp office with a mattress, a dresser, and a window that looked directly at a flagpole.

“This is perfect,” Amanda said.

Deb looked relieved.

Amanda looked at the mattress. “This is not a mattress.”

“It’s a mattress.”

“It’s a folded yoga mat with aspirations.”

Deb laughed. “You’ll survive.”

That was the problem with Maine.

Everyone said that.

You’ll survive.

The camp had been in Amanda’s family for generations. Camp Orgee sat beside a lake surrounded by pines and old cabins, a waterfront, dining hall, maintenance sheds, ropes courses, athletic fields and enough outbuildings to make Amanda suspect nobody had ever thrown anything away.

She loved it immediately. She hated it immediately.

The place was beautiful. The place was also a process-control nightmare.

Equipment was stored wherever somebody had last used it. Canoe paddles leaned against buildings. Cleaning supplies occupied random shelves. Food deliveries were unloaded according to whoever happened to be standing nearby. Staff schedules were written on a whiteboard in three different handwriting styles.

Amanda stood in the camp office holding a clipboard.

“How do you know where anything is?”

Deb shrugged.

“We ask.”

Amanda looked at her. “You ask.”

“Usually.”

“That’s not inventory control.”

“It’s camp.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Deb smiled. “You have a lot to learn.”

⸻

By the second day, Amanda had a notebook.

By the third, she had categories.

By the fourth, Sal had stopped asking what she was doing because the answer was always some variation of “making this less stupid.”

Sal, Deb’s husband, was camp director and had the particular ability to look guilty while doing nothing wrong.

The camp was full every summer. Revenue was strong.

Profit was not.

They had recently bought two new ski boats because apparently the old boats had become emotionally unreliable.

The staff worked for room and board, a modest stipend and the possibility of making questionable decisions with other young adults in the woods.

Amanda studied the financial statements. “You have a spending problem.”

Sal smiled. “We know.”

“You also have a purchasing problem.”

“We know.”

“And an inventory problem.”

“We definitely know.”

She looked toward the lake. “Why did you buy two boats?”

Sal glanced at Deb.

Deb shrugged, “The kids like boats. And it sounds good for marketing the place.”

Amanda sighed.

In New York, she had been brought into factories to identify waste.

In Maine, she had discovered that waste could have a captain’s license.

She rolled up her sleeves.

⸻

The first week became a blur.

Amanda reorganized the storage areas. She created simple visual controls. She moved high-use equipment closer to the people who used it. She eliminated three unnecessary approval steps and discovered that the camp had been paying rush shipping fees on items it could have ordered months in advance.

Nobody called it Lean.

They called it Amanda’s thing.

She didn’t care.

Work was easier than thinking.

That was becoming clear.

Every time she thought about Daniel, she found something else to fix.

A broken process was comforting.

A broken relationship wasn’t.

⸻

At 12:17 a.m. the telephone rang.

Amanda opened her eyes.

The camp office phone rang again downstairs.

She stared at the ceiling.

It rang a third time.

“Who calls a camp office at midnight?”

The phone rang again.

Amanda climbed out of bed, pulled on sweatpants, and walked downstairs.

She picked up. “Camp Orgee.”

A man’s voice answered. “Hey.”

Amanda waited.

“It’s me.”

“Who is this?”

“Bambi.”

She closed her eyes. “Who?”

“It’s Ben.”

“Ben who?”

“The guy.”

“What guy?”

“The guy you know.”

Amanda looked at the clock.

12:19.

“Ben, why are you calling the camp office?”

“I’m at the bar.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“I need a ride.”

“No.”

A pause. “Please?”

“Why can’t you call someone else?”

“You’re the only person whose number I have.”

“Why do you have the camp office number?”

“You gave it to me.”

“I did not.”

“You probably did.”

Amanda rubbed her forehead. “Where’s the bar?”

He gave her the name. Ten minutes away.

“Are you sober?”

“Absolutely.”

Amanda waited.

Ben added, “Well, no.”

She hung up.

⸻

The BMW looked absurd in the gravel parking lot.

It was built for Manhattan parking garages and corporate hotels.

Tonight it was surrounded by pickup trucks, mud and pine needles.

The bar was a single wooden building with a gravel lot and a staircase leading downstairs.

Amanda walked in.

A tall blonde bartender was wiping down the counter.

A bachelorette party was collapsing into itself in one corner. Somebody was singing. Somebody else was crying. Amanda didn’t want to know why.

“Ben?”

The bartender laughed. “Bambi?”

“Apparently.”

“He’s outside.”

Amanda stepped back into the night. She walked around the building.

Stopped.

There was Ben.

And a woman Amanda had never seen before.

He was pressed against the side of the building, groaning loudly with enthusiasm of a person who had never met consequences. The woman knelt in front of him. Her head bobbing in front of his crotch.

Amanda stared. She didn’t know the standard deviation of penis size, but either her ex Daniel had a tiny penis or Ben’s was enormous.

Ben opened one lake blue eye.

Saw her.

Grinned with drunk embarrassment. “Hey.”

Amanda looked at the woman.

The woman looked at Amanda. Mouth still full.

Amanda looked at Ben.

“Get in the car.”

Ben helped the woman up then pushed away from the wall.

“Sure.”

The woman laughed. “You’re leaving?”

Ben nodded. “Apparently.”

Amanda turned toward the parking lot. “Now.”

He jogged after her.

His bicycle was lying beside the building.

Amanda stopped. “That’s coming too?”

“It’s my bike.”

“I can see that.”

She opened the trunk. “Put it in.”

Ben looked at the BMW. “That seems expensive.”

“It is.”

“Will it fit?”

“No.”

He smiled. “That’s a problem.”

Amanda looked at him.

“You are the problem.”

He laughed.

⸻

On the drive back, Ben talked.

He talked about the bar. The bartender. The woman. The fact that Maine was better than his hometown.

His hometown had cornfields. Maine had a lake. His hometown had church every Sunday. Maine had a bar in a basement.

His mother worried about everything. He had never been drunk before tonight. He had never gotten head from a stranger before tonight.

“You’re twenty-three,” Amanda said.

“Yes.”

“You’ve never been drunk?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“My parents were strict.”

Amanda glanced over.

Ben looked out the window.

“I wasn’t allowed to do much.”

“So now you’re making up for lost time.”

“Maybe.”

He smilef, “It feels good.”

Amanda didn’t know what to say.

He was ridiculous. Careless. Completely unsupervised. And somehow sincere.

He wasn’t trying to impress her. He wasn’t trying to prove anything. He was simply delighted to be alive.

“I think,” Ben said, “people spend too much time worrying about what happens next.”

“Planning for what happens next is generally considered responsible,” Amanda explained like he still had a few years to truly understand,

“Maybe.” He thought about it. “My grandpa used to say, ‘The Lord sees your plans and laughs.’”

Amanda turned toward him. “That’s not actually in the Bible.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s in there.”

“It isn’t.”

“Book of Timothy.”

“There’s no such verse.”

“Maybe Proverbs.”

Amanda laughed despite herself.

Ben smiled. “There.”

“What?”

“You laughed.”

“I occasionally do.”

“You should do it more.”

Amanda looked back at the road.

She hated that he had noticed.

The road stretched through darkness. Trees crowded the headlights.

Ben eventually went quiet. His head tipped against the window.

Amanda looked at him.

He seemed younger asleep. Not childish. Just unguarded. A person who had finally stepped outside the boundaries he’d lived inside his entire life and had no idea how large the world was.

Amanda understood the danger. Freedom was wonderful. Freedom was also a terrible risk-management strategy.

She wondered if Maine was going to eat him alive.

Then she realized something worse.

She might have to work with him all summer.

⸻

They pulled into camp at 1:02 a.m.

Ben opened the door. Stumbled out. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He took two steps toward the camp.

Stopped.

Bent over.

Vomited into the gravel.

Amanda stared at the windshield.

When he finally disappeared toward the cabins, she shut off the engine.

For a long moment she sat there.

Then she laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because it was absurd.

New York had given her a six-figure career, a corner office, a fiancé and a perfectly optimized life.

Maine had given her a drunken camp employee vomiting in the parking lot.

She looked at the dark cabins.

Maybe this was what her cousin meant by getting away.

Tomorrow she would make a list. Tomorrow she would fix something. Tomorrow she would figure out how to make this place run properly.

For tonight, she had one conclusion.

Ben was going to be a problem.

She had no idea yet that he was also going to be the person who taught her that not every problem needed fixing.