The Slip

by Mark Sampson

  “All righty then,” said Raj, nodding at my garbage bags. “Let’s see what you got.”

  I untied the bags and pulled free the bristol boards as I took them over to his desk. Laying them on the desktop, I began walking Raj through the sequence of pictures and quotes and gnomic little platitudes, this grand visual arc. “And when we get to this part of the script,” I said, moving my hand crabwise along the bristol board, and looked up at him, “what we’ll want to do is —”

  But then I stopped. I stopped and gazed into Raj’s face as he stared intensely at the images in front of him. His expression, reader, hadn’t changed, not really. It remained the same cocky, dopey, stiff-lipped, slightly sleazy visage it always was. Except. Except his eyes, reader. His eyes were now lightly glossed with tears.

  “Raj?”

  “Your kids make these for you?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, they did. I mean, they helped me with them.”

  He pressed his wrist to his nose, held it there a moment. “You’re a lucky man, Sharpe,” he said, his voice quavering slightly. “You’re a fucking incredibly lucky man.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  A pall fell over us both then. I don’t think I could put into words what I felt, there in the spume of Raj’s sadness, but let me try. Pride and thankfulness, maybe, a slight delicate skein of entitlement. But also shame and unworthiness, ignorance of the sheer magnitude of my fortune. Sort of like you’re somebody who jaywalks all the time and yet, miraculously, never gets hit by a bus. Looking over Grace and the kids’ bristol-board work, I felt as if all of this, my whole life, had grown extraordinarily fragile, and I dare not extend myself too far lest I puncture reality’s thin skin. Glancing back into Raj’s face, I sensed that his reality had already been punctured. That his life had been torn to shreds long ago.

  But just as quickly as he entered it, Raj pulled himself out of this emotional tailspin. “All right, boys,” he said, “let’s stop fucking around and get down to some real work.” He went to his shelf and grabbed an expensive-looking camera, one with a huge, complicated lens. He got it going and began snapping pictures of the different sections of the bristol boards, which he would convert into images he could splice into the video later, during post-production.

  Walter came by and led me by the arm. “Okay, let’s get you set up over here.” He turned me around, raised the tweed at my rump, and clipped a microphone battery to the back of my slacks. He then walked me with the microphone cord, like a marionette, over to the director’s chair. I sat in it, its canvas seat sinking like a hammock under the weight of my ass. Walter clipped the microphone to my lapel, just below Grace’s poppy, and then tucked the cord out of sight.

  Jerome looked at me through the viewfinder of the camera in front of me. “How you doin’, Dr. Phil?”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said.

  “Okey-dokey, then.” He made a few adjustments to his lens and then moved to the other camera, angled at my right. Raj took his place, looking through the first camera with a Spielbergian air. “Okay, light’s good, colour’s good,” he said clinically. “Philip, we’re just gonna get a level on your mic, okay?”

  “Okay.” I stared into the camera, that cold, glass eye in its black, telescopic bonnet. It felt kind of criminal, being this exposed to the world. Walter came by with the printout of the script, and I took it from him and rested it on my lap.

  “I’m just gonna ask you some random questions,” Raj said. “Let’s, um, start with — what’s your full name?”

  “Philip Christopher Sharpe.”

  “Cool. Where were you born?”

  “Charlottetown, PEI.”

  “Great. Where do you work?”

  “At the University of Toronto.”

  “Nice. Let’s see … um … What … what pop song best en­capsu­lates you?”

  I thought it over. “Oh hell,” I said with a lopped grin. “Maybe ‘Drunken Angel,’ by Lucinda Williams.”

  With that, Raj’s face jumped up from the viewfinder. “Oh shit — the drinks!” he said, moving to go. “I totally forgot the drinks!”

  But I raised a hand to stop him. “Raj, let’s wait,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s wait until we’re done.”

  “You wanna wait?”

  I turned back to the lens, to the whole world ready to watch me on the other side of it.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s … let’s wait till we’re done.”

  Epilogue: Recipe for the Bloody Joseph

  2 shots of Jameson Irish whiskey

  4 shots of tomato juice

  ½shot of freshly squeezed lemon juice

  7 dashes of Tabasco sauce

  1 (yes, you’re reading correctly; do NOT skip this step) generous squeeze of Heinz ketchup

  4 dashes of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce

  1 (don’t lose your nerve now; you’re almost done!) heaping spoonful of horseradish sauce

  2 pinches of celery salt

  2 pinches of black pepper

  Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 20 seconds. Strain contents into large ice-filled Collins glass. Garnish with a stick of fresh celery.

  Serves ONE (of the courageous)

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its generous financial support during the writing of this book.

  I would also like to thank my wife, Rebecca Rosenblum (to whom this novel is dedicated), and my good friend Patrick Hadley, both of whom read this manuscript at every stage and offered immeasurably valuable insights and suggestions.

  I also need to give a big thanks to the members of the writing group I’ve recently joined: Sara Heinonen, Liz Ross, and Brahm Nathans, thank you all for your great suggestions.

  For the chapter “Higher Learning,” I’m indebted to Philippa Sheppard and A.J. Levin for sharing with me their experiences living in and studying at Oxford in the 1990s. In Oxford itself, I owe a huge thanks to Helen Taylor for her generous tour of Balliol College and Holywell Manor, and to Niels Sampath for his il­lumin­at­ing tour of the Oxford Union building.

  For the chapter “The Midwife,” I’m indebted to the Facebook hive mind for recommending the following tomes on home births: Birthing from Within, by Pam England; Spiritual Midwifery, by Ina May Gaskin; and The Birth Partner, by Penny Simkin. A big thanks, as well, to Corey Matthews, who allowed me to interview her about her experiences as a doula. This chapter was also heavily inspired by the incomparable birthing scene in J.G. Ballard’s The Kindness of Women.

  Numerous works of philosophy and philosophical history went into the formation of Philip and his inner world, but I want to single out one impressively exhaustive book in particular: From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents, by David Gress. I should also acknowledge Civilization and Its Discontents, by Sigmund Freud; Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant; Unruly Voices, by Mark Kingwell; On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill; and The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau for providing much-needed inspiration and nourishment during the planning for this book.

  Finally, a huge thank you to Shannon Whibbs and the whole Dundurn team for their continued support and excellence. These folks really swing for the fence when it comes to Canadian books.

  Copyright © Mark Sampson, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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  Cover image: 123RF.com/file404

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Sampson, Mark, 1975-, author

  The slip / Mark Sampson.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-3575-0 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3576-7 (pdf).--

  ISBN 978-1-4597-3577-4 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8637.A53853S55 2017 C813’.6 C2016-905935-9

  C2016-905936-7

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

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