by Kyle SUNDBY

This is dur­ing our last child­less va­ca­tion. Some might say, “So, your last va­ca­tion then?” I might re­ply “Ha,” or maybe “Fun­ny.” This is on our tenth and fi­nal night in Nicaragua. And this is at a mo­tel, close to the air­port, in Managua.

“What the fuck is go­ing on? What the fuck?” This is what I hear soon af­ter falling asleep. Soon af­ter that, I hear the beep that prompt­ed my husband’s in­ter­rog­a­tive burst. It is an in­ter­mit­tent beep, and if I thought about it, I would re­al­ize that it had been beep­ing for some time. I had been able to in­cor­po­rate it in­to my dreams, sig­nal­ing seam­less scene and sit­u­a­tion changes like a metronome. My hus­band failed to demon­strate any com­par­a­tive capability. 

The time be­tween beeps is al­most a minute. Our flight is in about eight hours. We have been mar­ried for just over a year. 

I sug­gest that my hus­band at­tempt to an­swer his own ques­tion con­cern­ing the fuck and what it is. The source of the beep is some­where out­side our win­dow over­look­ing the al­ley­way be­hind the mo­tel. That is where I rec­om­mend he be­gin his investigations.

In the spir­it of a part­ner and not a mi­cro­man­ag­er, I do not weigh in on his ap­proach to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I say noth­ing as he sham­bles out of bed. I of­fer no re­veal­ing ex­pres­sion as he opts to clam­ber out the win­dow in on­ly his last-day-of-va­ca­tion un­der­wear. I dis­play no re­ac­tion as he comes back through the win­dow mo­ments lat­er car­ry­ing a smoke de­tec­tor that con­tin­ues to beep. I hard­ly re­spond when he asks, “I don’t smell any smoke – do you?” I do not ask him to pro­vide an an­swer as to why a smoke de­tec­tor is in­stalled and ac­tive in an alleyway.

The beep­ing is much loud­er in the room. The de­tec­tor has a red blink­ing light cor­re­spond­ing to the beep that makes it some­how loud­er. It can­not be turned off. I do ask my hus­band what the next step of his plan in­cludes. His an­swer in­volves putting on shorts, grab­bing the room key­card, and tak­ing the smoke de­tec­tor to the mo­tel office.

I hear the beep three or so more times as he ex­its our room from the front door this time and makes his way to the of­fice a few doors down. For five or so min­utes every­thing is qui­et. Ten or so min­utes af­ter that I lat­er learned that he’d been ex­plain­ing the ex­is­tence of the smoke alarm in the al­ley, ra­tio­nal­iz­ing him­self hold­ing the alarm, and jus­ti­fy­ing his de­ci­sion to bring the alarm to the front desk. This had not oc­curred with­out frus­tra­tions, as my hus­band and the per­son man­ning the front desk spoke dis­sim­i­lar lan­guages and both were on­ly re­cent­ly fast asleep.

My husband’s re­turn does not in­clude the beep­ing noise but is near­ly as loud as his ear­li­er ex­it through the win­dow. There are the ap­proach­ing foot­steps of a man who is tired and want­i­ng to share it with the world. There is the re­peat­ing chirp-click-wig­gle-swear se­quence as he ma­nip­u­lates the key­card and door lock. There is the ex­pec­ta­tion but ab­sence of the beep, which leaves a buzzing kind of tone/vibe/atmosphere in its place. There is the small num­ber of words ex­changed be­tween us. But sleep comes and lasts for the re­main­ing four hours of the night.

We wake at some point dur­ing the process of wak­ing up, then tran­si­tion to the process of check­ing out. We drop the key­card at the of­fice, where the beep­ing con­tin­ues muf­fled from a desk draw­er. My hus­band ex­changes a look with the de­feat­ed front desk per­son. By the time we leave the of­fice, the ex­changed look has be­come a head nod. An un­der­stand­ing. Recog­ni­tion of a shared ex­pe­ri­ence be­tween two peo­ple, one of which is my hus­band and the oth­er of which is not me.

At the air­port, I go to the bath­room and stare in­to the mir­ror for more than a few min­utes. On the flight and con­nect­ing flights home, I re-watch down­loaded episodes of “The Of­fice” for more than a few hours. At home, I share a bed and last name with my child’s fa­ther for more than a few years. In all that time, I hear the beep or some­thing like it on more than one oc­ca­sion. For each, I lis­ten for the beep and the re­sponse to come un­til the re­sponse no longer does.

Filed under Fiction on March 13th, 2026

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