The Slippage: A Novel

by Ben Greenman

  “Prove it,” he said. But she let his hand fall free, and by the time they made it out to the lot she was stood chastely before the house like a parishioner who had come to church at off-hours just to feel the holiness of the place. That night there was another fire. They were coming closer together now. A corner of a warehouse on the east side of town had burned, damaging the contents but harming no one. “Isn’t that right near my brother’s studio?” Louisa said, and William nodded, though he had no idea. The fire had started in a trash can. A coffee cup had been stuffed with toilet paper that was dipped in gasoline. It was significantly cruder than the others, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t connected. “Sometimes, a perpetrator will try to break his own pattern to throw us off,” the fire commissioner said. It didn’t make the six o’clock news but it led at eleven.

  William expected to meet Tom at Stevie’s event, but Louisa, twisting in small silver earrings, asked if they could pick him up. “There’s something wrong with his car again,” she said, fluffing her hair and frowning.

  He was standing outside already, wearing a red sport coat that came off as clownish. “Hey ho,” he said, sliding across the back seat. Something sloshed in his hand.

  “Is that a beer?” William said. “In my car?”

  “Life just gets better.”

  “That hasn’t been my experience,” William said.

  “Oh, because you have it so bad,” Louisa said.

  “Mom and Dad are fighting,” Tom said, and crushed the can.

  The event was in a temporarily converted garage a few blocks from Louisa’s office. A sign hanging in front said SPECIAL EVENT in red letters. William parked in the side alley and they went in through the back door. Eddie Fitch was the first to greet them, in a narrow hallway by the bathrooms. He kissed Louisa hello and shook Tom’s hand and then hung back as they went on up the hall, bugging his eyes out at William like a bad spy in a movie. “Something’s up with TenPak,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure.” His eyes darted from side to side. “Baker’s been having lots of closed-door meetings, some with Hollister, some with the new guy, and no one looks happy when they come out.” He spotted Gloria coming down the hall. “Can’t say any more,” he said. “She’ll never stop asking questions. I’ll call you.”

  Gloria leaned in, kissed the air near William and Louisa. “Are you guys going to see the talent?” she said. “He’s backstage. There’s a door over there by the stairs. I’ll take you.”

  Backstage was a tiny room not much larger than a closet. The walls were a pale yellow; the floor was old tile, no longer clean; the black leather couch was the only piece of furniture, unless you counted the folding tables with a tray of carrots and celery and an ice bucket filled with beer. Emma was standing in the corner; Stevie was next to her, talking with a young female reporter who was holding a digital recorder under his mouth. “I moved here because my company said so,” Stevie said. “It was a marriage of art and commerce.” He was wearing an olive sweater, tight at the cuffs, and loose black pants. William wondered if he had his blue bike shorts on underneath.

  “Art and commerce got married?” Gloria Fitch said in a loud whisper. “I know a perfect present for them: it’s a painting of a coin.”

  “I just wanted to do justice to music that I loved as a child,” Stevie said. “I hope I make people remember it better rather than forget it.”

  The reporter moved the recorder back under her own mouth. “Well, it seems like it’s all worked out,” she said. She pressed a button. The device beeped.

  Louisa stepped in to hug Stevie. Emma was showing now, well beyond the concealing power of any outfit, and that meant that she received a different kind of hug, hands on shoulders, faces briefly brushing. William didn’t even try; he just wished them both good luck, and Stevie gave back a salute and Emma curtsied cutely, as she had at Southern Christmas.

  It was time to go, but Louisa had struck up a conversation with Stevie. She was telling him how she liked what he was saying about the tree and the branches. “No one ever thinks the tree can fall,” Stevie said, and Louisa nodded, and Emma, standing behind them, met William’s gaze and slowly rolled her eyes. It was a comic gesture but also somehow seductive and Emma, sensing that, retreated behind Louisa. William watched them standing there next to each other. It gave him a sense of power, but also a sense of doubt. They were opposed: the power and the doubt, but also the two women, the taller brown-haired one he’d seen year in, year out, from nearly every angle, and the shorter, paler blonde who slipped out of focus even when he stared directly at her. Neither of them was really saying what she meant. Who was withholding the most? William was.

  A young man came in to call five minutes. Stevie put his face down into the ice bucket and came up breathing hard. “See you out there,” he said.

  The neighborhood lined the apron of the stage. A woman in a pantsuit came to the microphone first. She explained how Arrow Automotive had used the same theme music since 1947. “It served us well,” she said. “But last year we all agreed it was time for a change. That’s when we first heard this marvelous song. It only made things sweeter to learn that it was written by one of our regional marketing managers. Please give him a warm welcome.” Ominous electronic music swelled and dry-ice vapor floated across the stage from right to left. Then, on the screen at the rear of the stage, the image of a firework bursting open, along with a sampled thunderclap. “Flamma fumo est proxima,” Tom said. Stevie sprang up the shallow steps. He had changed into a black Arrow T-shirt. He looked like he’d been lifting weights. His guitar strap was patterned Navajo. “Rock star,” Graham Kenner yelled.

  “Hardly,” Gloria Fitch yelled, just as loud.

  Stevie basked in the glow of his specialized popularity. He picked out a note or two, then stilled the strings with the flat of his hand. “How are you all doing tonight?” he said. “I didn’t write this song with cars in mind, but maybe the cars had me in mind.” He strummed a chord. “This song is the new theme of Arrow Automotive, a leader in quality American automobiles since 1931. I hope you like it.”

  The first thirty seconds were purely instrumental, and William almost found himself humming along. Then Stevie lifted his head and started to sing:

  When times are dark, it fuels our pride

  A light that’s shining nationwide

  It keeps us walking on the straight and narrow

  We don’t need a second chance

  To make the most of circumstance

  The truth comes straight ahead just like an arrow

  When Stevie reached the end of the verse, he paused. A floodlight doused the room in blue, revealing a drummer behind him, previously unseen, and Stevie grabbed the microphone with his right hand for the chorus: “Every time I stand, it’s for America,” he sang. “It stands for every single thing I love.” A man with a gray goatee held a plastic cup aloft, his index finger extended. A woman, her face lit by her cell phone, took video. There was a second verse that had an even higher incidence of patriotism than the first, and then a second chorus. Afterward, Stevie played an instrumental version of the original Arrow theme.

  “I read that it was composed to mimic the sound of a car coming across a bridge,” a woman next to them said. “It was Pittsburgh and they have hundreds of bridges.” She had freckles on both cheeks and plenty more to say but William didn’t catch any of it; it was as if someone was cutting a lawn of words and those were the clippings that were flying out of the top. Tom leaned in and said something, and the freckled girl wandered off.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her to go by the bar and I’ll meet her there,” he said. “Now I’m going to get a drink.”

  “And I’m going to get rid of one,” William said. He passed Graham Kenner, who was too close to Helen Hull in the corner of a booth. William couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was putting a dreamy smile on her face. He went farther down the hall, turned at the
end, and there stood Emma, in the dogleg by the bathrooms. She was as round as a raindrop. William stiffened from shoulder to shoulder. He considered running. But when she turned, he was still there, and he waved with a hand that felt suddenly tiny. “Hi,” he said.

  “Did you enjoy the show?” she said. Her face had grown fuller with her body.

  “Did you?” he said.

  She considered him for a minute, pursing plump lips, and disappeared into the nearest door. William glanced around the hall: its red paint was peeling to show other colors underneath. A corkboard advertised upcoming shows, as well as items being sold by musicians. Would he pay three hundred dollars for a “used amp almost new”? The wall was giving him a headache.

  Emma emerged, too soon for almost anything. She had a piece of paper in her hand, and she thrust it toward William. “What is this?” William said.

  “A note,” she said. But it was a paper towel with a childlike drawing on it that he slowly came to recognize as an octopus. “I want you to read it.” A button popped high on her sweater and one heavy breast swung toward him. She seemed drunk but that was impossible. “Listen,” she said. “I have a story for you.”

  “Okay,” William said.

  “It’s going to take a minute.”

  “A minute’s not going to kill me,” he said, hoping he was right.

  She took a deep breath. “A few weeks ago, I was driving by that park where we spent the afternoon,” she said. “I was thinking about you, wondering about why I spent time with you. I couldn’t think of any reason at all, not at first. But then in the park I realized: it was because you gave me freedom. I loved the idea that I could change my life, and I liked you for helping me get closer to that idea.” He started to agree, but she waved him silent. “And now the baby’s close, and the bigger I get the smaller I get, and I don’t see how I’ll ever be able to change anything again.” William held the octopus paper out to Emma. She stepped back, just one small step, but it was enough to prevent her from taking the paper from him. The relief in her eyes was enormous, like someone thrown free of a wreck. She went back into the party without tears or anything else.

  The Fitches were dancing in a corner of the club, moving to different music than the music that was playing over the loudspeakers. They were bathed in a lunar blue. Gloria swung her head from left to right and back again. “Look at them,” Louisa said. “Want to dance?”

  “I think the party’s over,” William said.

  A look came over Louisa’s face like it was the saddest thing she had ever heard. “Okay,” she said. “Have it your way. Let’s go get Tom.” Louisa said. Tom was firmly installed at the bar with the freckled girl, and he patted the stool next to him to show William and Louisa where to sit down.

  After that, William remembered little: two beers, then another, then a glass of whiskey pressed into his hand, warm and mean, then Tom’s knees snugged around the freckled girl’s calf. Eventually, they left Tom there, entangled, and Louisa complained bitterly the whole way home that he needed to grow up, that he would never grow up, that he was worse than a child, that it was her job as a sister to point it out and she didn’t know why the freckled girl couldn’t see it.

  The whiskey tugged on William’s sleeve to remind him of the beers. He was out on the deck, and Louisa was in the house, still sleeping. When he called to wake her up, she hung up on him, and he listened to the Buddhist drone of the dial tone.

  Earlier in the morning, he had seen what he thought was his favorite bird, the high-whistler, perched on the edge of the lion tub, and when it reappeared in the grass by the eagle he decided to go down into the yard for a better look. When he came back up, Louisa was in his chair. “I’m feeling a little woozier than I’d like,” she said. “How about you?”

  “Same,” he said. “A little worse before, a little better now. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

  “Alcohol is a pretty good disinfectant,” Louisa said. “I was all snugged in last night when we got home. That’s the best thing about drinking. It changes the outside by changing the inside.”

  “Sounds like something your brother would say.”

  “I think it’s something he has said,” Louisa said. “Listen: I had a dream. Well, an idea.”

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “Let’s have a party,” Louisa said. “Over at the new house.”

  “Well, sure. But it won’t be done for a while.”

  “That’s my stroke of genius. I thought of it last night at Stevie’s thing. You know how you and Wallace are putting up the deck first?”

  “I do know, yes.”

  “Well, that’s perfect for a party. We can bring over some of the furniture, and those scenic lanterns, and the grill. And Tom’s birthday is right around that time.”

  “Maybe I’ll bring over a tub to help him celebrate.”

  “Sure,” Louisa said. “We can put bottles of beer in there with him and he can hand it out to people.” Her face was taking on daylight now. “Imagine. Our first party at the new house.”

  William tried. The only party he could imagine was the one he’d just been to: Gloria and Eddie dancing in a blue wash, Graham Kenner flirting with Helen Hull, Tom ordering drink after drink for an unknown freckled girl. There were blank spots where other people had been. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Great.”

  “Right,” he said. “Great. And if we get right up to the day of the party and I decide I’m too fragile, I can just hide out in the command center the whole time.”

  She started to reply but held her fire. They let the sunlight beat down on them, a silent cleansing.

  THREE

  On the radio, a candidate for local office promoted a spiritual brand of environmentalism. “We all must share the earth,” he said, tone honeying. No one would have wanted the bit of it William was passing across: a small river of filthy metallic water and a bridge stretched over it. And yet there was something comforting about the scene, the way it communicated its decay honestly. The small lot beside Tom’s studio was constellated with broken glass, so William parked on the street. He smelled acrid air the second he opened the car door; this was where the warehouse fire had been, in the building that backed onto Tom’s studio. William got out and wandered down into the alley, past a Dumpster loaded with burned boards and bolts of cloth.

  A man’s voice hailed William from the side of the alley. “Look,” he said. “It’s Paint Cup.” By William’s reckoning the other man was Paint Cup, but he wasn’t about to quibble. “How’s tricks?” the man said.

  “Can’t complain,” William said.

  “Me neither.” He coughed a laugh. He looked a little worse for wear, clothes grimier, hair knottier. A scratch on the back of his hand glowed hot-tempered red.

  “I think I might take this after all,” William said. “Build a doghouse.”

  “Suit yourself.” He gestured toward it the way a king might. “I have no need for it here.”

  “Thanks.” William tipped it onto its side. “Hey,” he said. “I saw there was a fire here.”

  “There was,” the man said. “Pretty exciting. I almost got myself an autograph from a firefighter. A hook-and-ladder was parked right over there.” He pointed. “You ask your friend about it?”

  “Who?”

  “Your friend. The one who was with you last time. I saw him go in there about a half hour before the place went up.”

  “No,” William said. “I doubt it. He doesn’t have a place here anymore. Must have been someone who looked like him.”

  “Must have been,” the man said, mouth curling into some kind of smile. He rooted in the pile next to him and withdrew a blanket. “I think I’m going to take a nap,” he said. “All this fascinating conversation has tired me out.” He disappeared beneath a stretch of blue.

  “Okay,” William said. He got his fingers beneath the edge of the crate and lifted.

  At the house, all he had wanted to see, he saw the moment
he set down the crate behind Wallace’s command center. The doghouse mimicked the shed, which was itself a miniature of the larger house, which was now a frame standing between William and Harrow Street. The upmost third of the skeleton, done in cedar, was a graph that rose from left to right. Things, at last, were looking up.

  Out in town, buying things he didn’t need, William pushed open a drugstore door into bright afternoon and ran smack into Fitch. “Oh, hi there,” Fitch said. He checked the face of his phone. “I’m late.” He angled his phone up again, squinted against the glare. “I’m late.”

  “For a very important date?” William said.

  “I meant to call you,” he said. A woman rolled her stroller up to him. Fitch smiled shyly, and the woman frowned, and then Fitch frowned, too, unsure why his smile hadn’t been matched.

  “I need to get by,” she said. Fitch nodded but stayed put. William, in a show of leadership, moved off into a shadowed patch nearby. “I was going to call you,” Fitch said again.

  “So you say,” William said. “About what?”