In a few days, we’ll be taking the weekend jet to Pompeii for a vacation. We’re renting this cute house right near a volcano that’s as haunted as it is romantic. The woman we’re renting from – she lives in Fair Haven, NJ but has this house and a shabby chic starter castle in Transylvania – says we’ll definitely have to fight to stay alive. Luckily, my husband grew up in Pompeii, so he can protect us. He’s charred remains and works for a hedge fund in Norway.
He’s been practicing spell-casting with the new Tom Ford Grimoire, and has really been making progress! In the past, I would just assume he’d leave us to fend for ourselves, but COVID seems to have been a wake-up call. He seems serious about rekindling our open marriage. For example, he promised me we could sacrifice our friend, Desdemona, to the volcano gods if the spells don’t work. He assures me there’s a rather breathtaking vantage point where we can take in the sunset while old Des’s screams echo in the volcano’s rather exquisite natural acoustics.
Speaking of dear, dumb, Desdemona, we’ll be traveling with eight of our friends that all rent on nearby islands. We all have different opinions on the vaccine, so we’ve agreed to wear these war medals that were procured from dying men. The men these came from may have said the medals are cursed, but it’s hard to understand someone’s accent when you don’t try to. Clara had to cancel our weekly squash game due to sudden blindness, and Genevieve has said voices keep telling her how we’re all going to die. Still, we’re going to wear them and hope they ward off COVID.
We’’ll be gone until the addition on our house is finished. We’re putting in a wrap-around deck, having it torn up, and then installing a pool with heated tiles. We’ll be using two crews: one to do the work, and one to yell at for fun. We’re paying the work crew to take a dance marathon approach to the job. Basically, they’ll lay intricately patterned heated tiles to 1930s songs until they drop from fatigue and dehydration.
I really hope the vacation is fun. Sure, there’s always maritime murder, but still. My friends always say there’s nothing quite like tying a scarf around one’s head, wearing your finest Prada sunglasses, discussing property taxes and cozy Italian villas, and shooting someone with a harpoon gun. Personally, I think after you see one person look at you with anger and shock, fall into the water, and get eaten by sharks, you get it.
Either way, we’ll definitely need to keep the liquor flowing. Genevieve is a real downer lately, and keeps making quite the racket about our Pompeii house boiling in rushing lava. We’re not new. We have renter’s insurance, so we’ll be fine.
