The Slide: A Novel Read Free Page A

like some response here.”
    “My apartment has been demolished by a mixed act of nature and insidious vermin. Fine. You want me to talk about it, and I wouldn’t mind talking about it, but I am not someone who can complain.”
    “You can’t complain. But even that is a kind of complaint.”
    “You and I don’t live in Cambodia. There aren’t land mines in our backyards that could blow off our limbs every time we go out for a jog.”
    This was my best friend, driving the Ford. Look at him, I thought. Look and absorb and perhaps steal. It seemed suddenly very clear that of all the resources I had in the world, all the unfairly distributed and crapshoot gifts I’d been blessed with, perhaps Stuart Hurst would prove the most valuable. Because the basic truth was that I had a decision to make, one I had put off for as long as I possibly could because I didn’t have the proper tools. Or, rather, I had too many tools and no concept of how to use them. I needed considerable help.
    “I want to contract some thought.”
    “I know just the guy,” Stuart said.
    “I owe it to her and I owe it to myself. I have three weeks. Three weeks to devote to nothing but deciding whether I’m actually in matter of serious fact in love with her. I ask myself all the time: are you in love with her? And I answer. I say the word and I believe the word, but then at the same time I hear the word, and it sounds hollow.”
    “Quick,” Stuart said. “Are you in love with Audrey?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I see what you mean.” He considered this for a mile. “Realize I have to charge you. We’re not playing kickball here. This is what I do professionally. The more serious I take what I do, the better I end up doing it.”
    “Maybe part of the question is answered by the fact that I’m looking for third-party help,” I said. “Maybe that’s data for you to add to the pile.”
    “Maybe,” he said.
    “I used to be an emotionally rich young male, Stubes. Now I’m like, what’s the cardboard. Manila.”
    “This sounds like the sort of thing where I work at my own pace until I reach a conclusion and then charge you retroactively. Meaning there will have to be a certain level of trust between us that I, mentator, am not going to screw you, client. But I will charge you. Break, sure. Discount, sure. Free lunch, no.”
    We passed our old middle school, the Ladue fire department, the Amoco station where I’d once seen two hockey players kick and tear at each other until the ground was covered in blood and flannel and khaki. Audrey had questioned what I wanted. We had entire conversations about what we might each possibly want. Over time it became clear that what she knew of desire was far greater than the filaments I had at my disposal. And this, among so many other things, had led to profound loss of sleep.
    “We will of course still throw a party,” he said. “Call it a Welcome Back, Potter party.”
    I sneezed twice, then let my head fall against the window.
    “You expect there to be women at this party? Talkative?”
    “Damn yes,” he said. “Research.”

june
    two
     
    m y mother’s timing was a thing of minor and inescapable beauty. Two eggs, fried like clockwork into the hollowed middle of two pieces of toast. I came down the stairs into the kitchen and she was there at the stove, angling the frying pan so the meal slid neatly onto a plate. Every single morning, impeccably timed, an act so simple it approached the mystical. She washed and toweled the pan, then returned it beneath the counter, where it waited until the next morning.
    I spent a lot of time saying thank you .
    There felt a certain theatricality in play. I was audience to my mother’s ongoing task to prove to herself there were things to be done. I sat on a stool at the counter and watched her move through the kitchen and into the new computer room, pass back through the kitchen on her way to the basement door. Humming some pleasant tune. Or from the