The Slide: A Novel Read online

  He was a sage. During the next couple hours we went from the table to the deck loungers to the couches inside the pool house. We spoke frequently enough that we never forgot we weren’t alone. The television was situated along the far wall, next to the fireplace, and there were two couches, both coffee-brown leather with blankets neatly tossed over their backs, and one love seat. In the free space between the kitchen and the couches was a wooden dining table with four hand-carved chairs. Stuart’s bedroom and the bath/changing room were in back. We watched the last half of a Cardinals victory over the Brewers, then went back outside.

  The sage walked to the pool’s edge and pointed at the water. “Vacuum is having the damnedest time figuring out that starfish.”

  The insomnia became something I could almost rely on, but not quite. There was the odd night when I slept like a normal human. Usually, though, I’d end up trapping two or three hours of sleep, just enough that I made it through the following day without falling over. There was little point even going through the bedtime motions. I undressed. I went horizontal. I cannot describe the full extent of breathing exercises I employed. I went to the bathroom and masturbated my brains out. Nothing worked. Over and over again I gave up, convinced that the only way I was going to find sleep was by quitting the search. Of course, this was just trying, one step removed.

  Several days passed without further word arriving from Audrey. Once or twice I sat in the new office and considered writing, but the lack of anything new to say combined with an image of her in some European Internet café—distracted, shrugging off whatever I managed to put into words, running out into Tuscan sun to explore the countryside by moped, laughing with Carmel about my feeble attempt to rectify, laughing always, Carmel laughing with those lips and teeth—made for a wicked deterrent. Also: the office looked out onto the garden, where my mother continued with a job I couldn’t possibly believe required such abundant continuation.

  I spent afternoons sitting at the pool while Stuart worked. Sometimes he paced; other times he buried his face in his palms. He made no mention of the apartment or Dutch elm disease, and I appreciated his continued stoicism. And at night, when cicadas screamed in Dolby Surround, he threw parties. Guests appeared out of darkness to stand around the pool, holding cans of Bud Light. Stuart had become friends with sets of employed couples who lived together with their dogs in two-bedroom houses they rented for less than any reasonable person would expect. I sat within the fruity nimbus of citronella and watched tight shirts stray up women’s backs when they bent to test pool water. I saw ponytails threaded through openings in pink Cardinals caps. I saw fingernails painted a sort of nacreous anticolor, all shiny and white-tipped. I tried not to stare.

  In the middle of it all, Edsel Denk was diving, and he was really fucking good at it. I watched him run from the basic to the complex, throwing his huge frame into gainers and inwards and front and back flips. Flips with half spins. Edsel was two years older than me, and this was the first I’d seen of him since I left for school. I remembered him as being so tall and so skinny it was hard to say which he was more. But tonight he looked bigger, wider, and the increased size made his presence here at Stuart’s pool even more of a violation. He’d also grown a beard. Thick and dark and ragged, it was facial hair of a caliber just pubic enough to suggest the nature of man I knew Edsel to be.

  Twice I stood and moved through the party, nodding and smiling at people while still maintaining a close eye on my seat. I caught up with guys I played baseball with, girls I’d taken to homecoming dances, people I wanted to call remnants from a past life but to do so implied a current or future life, distinct from the past. Whenever I caught someone scoping my chair at the deck table, I returned to sit at the last possible minute. The third time I did this I saved it from a confusingly old girl-woman who then pulled out the chair next to me. She smiled and asked how I’d been.

  “Mainly fine,” I said.

  She was medium all around and wore makeup that flashed at certain angles in the lambent blue of the pool light. I had no idea who she was. But I sensed a grave struggle between her straightened hair and the humidity, and I applauded her for it. I also found myself liking a small mole that sat central on the girl’s right cheek.

  “We had AP Bio together,” she said. “Didn’t we?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But if so, that means we went to the same high school. Which is a big deal in this town.”

  “Your name is Potter.” Now a smile took shape. “You sat in the lab group two over from me. Potter Mays. You wore big jeans and went out with that junior girl who played tennis.”

  “Meredith Flackman,” I said. “But only until that bearded cocksucker on the diving board stole her from me.”

  “Oh my God, I remember. That was the story about you. Weren’t you also really good at soccer?”

  “Baseball,” I said. “I hit a lot of singles up the middle.”

  “Jesus, I had such a weird crush on you.”

  I watched Edsel Denk flip his massive frame into the night and remembered the starfish sitting in the bottom of the deep end. I looked back at the girl next to me and in the interest of research I managed to force all Audrey comparisons aside.

  “Weird how?” I asked.

  “It was the kind of crush that shows up in flashback episodes of sitcoms. When the parents explain to their kids how they met? One of them was usually gaga over someone else. You were the one I had this crush on while I was waiting to meet the other guy, the one who would end up being my husband.”

  The candle on the table smelled like pears burning inside a tire.

  “What are you doing this summer?” she asked.

  “Three days a week I volunteer at a not-for-profit women’s center. I do counseling work. Grief, trauma, all of these. The other two days I drive down to Jeff City to help run a literacy program at the Missouri State Penitentiary.”

  “Potter Mays,” she said, laying one hand flat and bringing her body over the table, toward my chair. “I thought I had your whole story pegged. Honestly, I’m surprised. I’m impressed.”

  “And yourself ?”

  “I paralegal this summer for a friend of my father’s, then it’s off to Georgetown Law. I can’t wait.”

  I emptied the end of my beer into the bushes. “I’m sorry if I seem disconnected. My mom is going through some pretty serious health issues right now.”

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

  She put her other hand on top of mine and we shared a moment of silence. Her mole cheek was only inches from my face. I hadn’t planned on lying, but I refused to be on the short end of this exchange. The last thing I needed was some average woman girl looking at me like a failure. I continued to not lick her cheek.

  “Well, if you find yourself wanting to talk, I’m around.” She squeezed my hand and left me alone with the candle.

  Everyone had gained weight. The men exuded an air of pride, something in their shoulders. A lot of the weight was muscle, but they were also getting fat. They spoke loudly, pointedly, men who understood the importance of active engagement. I saw hairlines in the early stages of recession. Young men who’d been timid and meek in high school had thickened into something else, some small locus of force, a piece in the whole national project.

  I decided to find the sage. I pulled my own Cardinals cap low and watched the ground, knowing if I fell into another exchange I’d end up lying again, and this city was too small to lie without extensive planning. Stuart was alone in the pool house, using one of his credit cards to divvy out a small mound of Talkative.

  “Brockman’s here,” I said, sitting. “There’s a group huddled out there who keep laughing. He’s smoking a cigar and talking about his job in Chicago. What does he do?”

  “He sells,” Stuart said quickly, “he’s in sales.”

  “What does he sell?”

  “I have no idea. Does it matter?”

  “I would like it to matter.”

  “Well
, I’m sure he knows what he sells.” Stuart looked up. “That’s the important thing when you’re in sales.”

  “A product,” I said. “He sells a product.”

  “Or not. Let’s not assume.”

  “People say he’s been getting laid like some feral mammal.”

  “Have you seen his car? He’s leasing one of these tiny European coupe things with reflective oversize rims. He picks up dates in his little sex car and takes them out to dinner. He steers the conversation and tips the valet and the women basically fall home with him as if to gravity. His routine could be bottled.” Stuart leaned over the square mirror on the coffee table, snorted, and sat immediately up. “Quickly now. Describe the last place you and Audrey had sex.”

  “Her room. Once all her paintings and photographs and furniture were already packed. Just us, sheets, bed, and alarm clock.”

  “Was it: A, good; B, okay; C, awkward; or D, something you both knew was a bad idea but felt like had to happen for some sort of closure?”

  “I wouldn’t say closure. The whole nature of this three-week plan is counterclosure. Awkward, yes. But okay overall. I wouldn’t say good.”

  “Quickly still: list all items of your clothing currently in Audrey’s possession.”

  “In Europe? Or in Portland?”

  “Quicker.”

  “My red hoodie. My blue zip-up hoodie. A bunch of bootie socks. Who knows what else.”

  “Your socks fit Audrey.”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “This is all very important information, thank you.”

  I wondered how long Stuart had been in here with the credit card. I sat still and watched him rub his thighs and dart eyes around the room while in the kitchen someone deployed a sequence of words into a cell phone, some foreign code, and outside through the French doors I saw Edsel Denk bounce and lift into the air. Moments later his bearded face emerged from the water slowly, seductively, Marlow or whatever his name is in Apocalypse Now. I leaned myself over the mirror and partook.

  “Remember the timid Brockman?” Stuart asked. “The one who cried when he got cut from freshman basketball? He drove a beige Corolla.”

  “I want documentation of the change. Psychological time-lapse.”

  “Go on interviews,” he said. “Find a business that’s hiring. Consult. Make money and get laid.”

  “I could have gone home with a girl from AP Bio. She said something charming about television and I made up a story about my mom dying. Why did I do that?”

  “Then you take a guy like Edsel Denk,” Stuart said. “You want laid, he’s got it down to a perverse science. The anti-Brockman. No money, no dinners, just this evil and stratospheric duende.”

  “What is he doing here, Stubes? Why is he at your pool?”

  “There are two rules for the pool, Potter. No glassware outside and no pissing me off. Edsel comes from time to time because he believes in what’s going on here. He is interested in the dynamic, as we all are. I’m not going to exclude him because of his history with women, particularly yours.”

  “He’s an asshole,” I said.

  “That’s accurate, yes. A remarkable asshole.”

  Outside, people continued to enjoy each other’s company. They bummed smokes and flashed smiles and gently leaned into one another as if not from longing but subtle shifts in the earth’s tilt. It was all right there, right outside the French doors. Nothing was stopping me from developing a smoking habit. I knew how to smile. And yet all I wanted was to bury myself in the backyard.

  “I have to get some sleep.”

  “That’s right.” Stuart pulled out his small Baggie, twist-tied and full of white. “Good luck with that.”

  june

  three

  the house, my family’s ever-expanding house designed expressly with comfort in mind, remained, for me, a place devoid of comfort. When my father wasn’t away on business I made rigorous efforts to avoid being at home with both parents at once. It was when we were three that everything became tightly cautious and liminal: a house caught in that momentary silence between inhale and ex. I was perhaps losing weight, a result of my unwillingness to sit down with them to dinner. Of course they said nothing of this. Unlike Audrey’s family, where incidental guilts were traded among siblings and parents like some base form of currency, the more valuable wrongdoings hoarded and treated as investments, our little home’s guilt resources had been so thoroughly exhausted by the loss of Freddy that we seemed, perhaps, above it?

  Yet there was still the comfort issue. So in an effort to redefine my relationship with the house, I had begun contributing a few basic, menial chores to its upkeep. Each morning I smoothed and realigned the sheets I’d lashed at during the night. I went from room to room, emptying trash baskets into one large bag I placed into a squirrel-proofed metal can in a corner of the garage. I moved among framed photographs with a spray bottle of Windex and a roll of high-quality paper towels. I switched off lights not in use.

  And still I could not sleep.

  Television was supposed to help. I spread myself out across the couch and searched for some sputtering drama to lull me into unconsciousness. Here were multiracial children discussing breakfast cereal. Here was a demonically gorgeous model molesting a can of light beer. And here was aerial flyby footage of a nexus of buildings surrounded by expansive parking lots. A deep man voice was echoed by a feminine whisper.

  MAN: Prepare yourself for the arrival of the New West County.

  WOMAN: Prepared yet?

  MAN: The Missouri Valley’s premier hub of entertainment and emporia, where all shopping unites beneath one luxurious roof.

  WOMAN: A beautiful beautiful roof.

  Fish-eye shots of fountains spewing from the ground floor toward the ceiling, computer renderings of a crowded food court, all sleek-lined and reflective. Towering palms sprouting from huge clay pots.

  MAN: You have to be there to believe it.

  WOMAN: Be there.

  MAN: Believe it.

  WOMAN: September first. Will you be there?

  Upstairs in bed, I listened to things I couldn’t see. Air conditioner. Branches against windows. Squirrels in the attic. Soon I heard my mother in the kitchen and recalled that she had her own trouble sleeping when my father was away, and this seemed a nice kind of family tie. I went to the bathroom and drank a glass of water, another, then went back to bed and tried to fall asleep.

  At 2:46 I developed an erection, one of these that materialize out of thin air, reversing the natural order of erectile cause and effect—that generate, rather than signify, arousal. Boredom boner. Math class boner. The animal sounds skittered above me and I rolled onto my side.

  Two unfamiliar naked bodies zipped into a shared sleeping bag, growing rapidly acquainted. Everyone else could have been on Jupiter. Audrey was from Portland—Oregon, she said, not Maine. I admitted being unaware there even was a Portland, Maine, and in return she admitted she probably couldn’t pick Missouri out of a crowd of two. This was honesty, bedrock. She was the baby, with an older brother and sister who shielded her like a secret. An extremely tight family, she said, friendship and safety, yes, very tight indeed. I milked details and hung on words and committed names to memory: brother Brandon in med school and sister Caroline in business school. Obstetrician father Doug and cardiologist mother Marilynne. Audrey couldn’t imagine what it must have been like growing up an only child.

  “It was . . . What was it? Lonely sometimes. But at the same time you always feel special, like you’re the point of everything.”

  “Ooh. Dangerous,” she said, then laughed, and the sound of it I also committed to memory, fearing the chance I might never hear it again.

  Sex driven by what I could only call portent. Nighttime sky immense and distant, two sleeping bags zipped together, hard earth surely somewhere below us though we no longer had any knowledge of or use for it, she ran fingers across my hairline. Curled into my shoulder and, in that bedtime voice I came to lo
ve, then tremble beneath, then eventually react to with nothing but confusion, added, “Can’t believe I just did it with a stranger.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back, “did it.”

  I stood from bed and put on shorts and shoes, a T-shirt to keep the mosquitoes off my chest. Downstairs, I thought briefly of my mother back there, alone and restless in her own bed. Except now I realized my father wasn’t out of town. To avoid even momentary consideration of this development, I rushed through the front door, leaving it unlocked, wondering if I should have put on socks.

  I walked in the middle of the street, moving clockwise around the neighborhood’s loop. The pavement beneath my feet was smooth and black and recently tarred. My plan was to pound memory out of my head, beat it senseless and move on.

  For me the cheating might have germinated in something as simple as tradition, the oldest and most habitual example of human weakness, our mundane inability to find happiness inside what we have. But never for a second did I feel consciously unhappy, so my own explanation felt more complicated than these and was further compounded by disgust for the very redundancy of the whole thing.