The Slide: A Novel Read Free

afraid to go there. Lining the highway were commercial developments I’d never seen before. Soon we came to the bridge of the Science Center, where kids on field trips aimed speedometers at traffic. The whole highway moved at a cautious fifty-eight. Once we exited, Stuart made a series of rapid turns and I lost all sense of direction, all I could see were houses and trees, trees everywhere, until he came to a stop where a fire truck and several police cruisers blocked the road.
    “Well.” He flicked his cigarette to the ground. “How’s this for something.”
    I followed a few steps behind. The visuals were powerful—spinning lights, various troops of personnel moving across the scene, a thin crowd of gawking onlookers. At the center of it all was a building, its top quarter collapsed by the tree that had fallen into it. I had been awake for much of the storm that moved through during the night. There was a solid hour when drops were massive and the wind a force. And now here was this tree at this awkward angle, the rubble of fallen brick, a barbarous act of partial destruction.
    I heard shouting and the clunk of boots on pavement. The firemen leaned against their truck and watched. Stuart remained calm, so I tried to remain calm. I took turns looking at Stuart and looking at where the tree had fallen through the apartment. His arms were crossed at his chest.
    “Looks like no other apartments were damaged,” he said.
    “That’s the apartment. The e-mail.”
    “Look close and you can see my red couch in there. See it? Totally great couch.”
    Imagine the sound of a tree severing from itself and falling through a building. Thunderous crack of wood followed soon by crash of brick and plaster and more wood. At ground level, the stump and about six feet of splintered tree remained, doomed. What was this? Surely wind alone couldn’t have cracked so massive a trunk down the middle.
    “Those firemen look bored as hell,” he said.
    I looked at the crowd of onlookers . Were these walkers who had just happened upon this disaster? Several were talking into phones. It would be a hard scene to leave once you stumbled upon it; a tree falls in the city and select few are there to look. There would be the natural urge to describe it all to some friend or family member, dial a random number and share with whoever answered. To describe was to make real; listen to what I’m seeing. You’ll never believe what I saw. I used to say girlfriend and find reassurance, a word to frame that corner of my world.
    I overheard the man next to me speaking of a particular fungus. Dutch elm, he said, then again to someone else. Dutch elm. I shared the fungus theory with Stuart, speaking out of the corner of my mouth as if delivering a grave national secret.
    “Well,” he said. “Well well well well.”
    Here was actual trial, and Stuart was handling it like a weathered veteran. Was it really only one year between us? Though I had friends in my class through school, baseball teammates and the normal balance of sundry peers, there was something to having a friend a year older. He was a guide of sorts to whatever was to come in year X + 1, a role I knew he relished. Now he was composed, stoic in the face of immense loss. With this and the signature, I felt honored to be standing so close to him.
    “I wonder who you’re supposed to tell. The firemen? They’ll point you in the right direction, at least. Get the insurance agent out here.”
    “I got a car full of meat, Potter. Let’s go back to the pool house.”
    We walked back to the car and climbed inside. I adjusted the air-conditioning onto my face and watched the spinning lights until we were around the corner. I didn’t know what to say.
    “I don’t know what to say. Look at you. You’re a rock.”
    Now, backtracking along the route we’d taken earlier, I felt the first bored pangs of recognition. There was the park. The Science Center. Fifty-eight miles per hour.
    “I would sure