The Slippage: A Novel (13 page)

A kite up over the trees was good for a minute or so. “After this can we play Frisbee?” Christopher said. William nodded, but he wasn’t sure how he was going to throw the thing; his fist was clenched so tight it felt like it was cramping.

The man from San Diego was named Ruben Whitfield. He was short, with large features that gave him a friendly if slightly vacant aspect. He was careful everywhere he went, the kind of man who looked at a spot before he sat down in it. On his first day, he made a point of going from office to office, acquiring one germane fact about each coworker; by noon, when he stopped by William’s office, he had a clear sense of Baker’s love for Hank Aaron and Harris’s ambition to sketch every skyscraper in the country and Elizondo’s childhood battle with Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease. Susannah Moore had been going to night school in screenwriting and had sold a script about a young woman who had an affair with a senator during Vietnam. “How about you?” Ruben said. He had a strange accent, overly precise, as if he was passing along someone else’s words.

“I’ve never even met the senator.”

“No. What’s one thing about you?”

“Are you writing these down somewhere?”

“Maybe,” Ruben said. He didn’t laugh at all.

“Me? There’s nothing interesting about me. I’m thinking of building my wife a new house.”

“Impressive,” Ruben said. “My great-uncle was a prominent builder in Canada for many years.” William held his left hand in front of him in a burlesque of a notepad and pretended to scribble. Now Ruben laughed. “That’s not really a fact about me, is it? For me, say that when I was eleven years old, I wrote a letter to a famous actress asking her if she would marry me, and she answered and said she would.”

“Did she?” William said.

“A gentleman never kisses and tells,” Ruben said. He shook William’s hand a second time and went back to his office, where he proceeded to work the phones the way that William imagined Fitch or Harris or Elizondo must have when they were first at Hollister, except that none of those men had exactly reached, as Ruben did, the golden mean between patience and persistence, which permitted him to make suggestions to the unheard customer on the other end of the line and then back off of them in such a fashion that the illusion of choice was created, and William, standing in the hall listening to Ruben, felt within himself a desire, almost inexplicable, to locate ten thousand dollars of ready cash and make an investment in this product, which, as Ruben was saying, was “not a guarantee, because there is no such thing as a guarantee, really, but it’s close, as close as you can get without bending the truth.” He was good.

Tuesday morning, feeling inspired or some approximation of it, William arrived early to put the finishing touches on the one-sheet for Gardner, only to find Ruben already burning up the phones. Harris’s new assistant said that she thought he had already signed up close to thirty thousand in new commitments. William went into the break room, where he found Fitch. “What’s up with the new guy?” William said.

“I can’t decide if he’s the spark that will save our division or some kind of demon who’s gunning for all our jobs,” Fitch said.

“Not my job,” William said. “I write copy.”

“But he’s part of something bigger. Don’t you think? Maybe that’s why George Hollister is here again today.”

“I don’t know if that means anything,” William said. “He’s been around the last few weeks. Probably, he’s just sticking close during this Domesta transition.”

This came as a relief to Fitch. “Right,” he said. “Right.” Suddenly he saw everything as if through sunlight. “Anyway, I’m glad the new guy’s doing a good job. After two months he’ll probably be down in the cafeteria with us just like Antonelli was, and I’ll be not quite laughing at his stupid jokes.”

William’s trip back down the hallway was indirect at best; he took pains to avoid Ruben’s office, paused at Elizondo’s door, ducked into the copy room and ran unnecessary copies of the file he was carrying. Baker and Harris were dissecting a movie both had seen on television the night before. William left the copy room and went to the break room, where he set the coffee machine to make him a cup he knew he wouldn’t drink. Louisa’s new coffee machine had arrived a few days before. She had unpacked it, a sleek black cylinder, something to worship. It made coffee in perfect silence and then blinked its small red eye to signal in code that it had done all it was required to do. Drinking other coffee now seemed like a form of failure.

Finally, back to his office, where he stared at the one-sheet for a while. Outside, in the hall, Cohoe’s wife had baked cookies, and they sat beneath a loose roof of tinfoil on a table. William watched as Cohoe straightened them and then wandered away. George Hollister came by, humming to himself. “Cookies,” he announced, and then pointed at the plate for emphasis. He removed the tinfoil, lifted one, took a bite. “Raisin,” he said scornfully, and was done with it immediately. He replaced the nibbled cookie on the plate and continued on down the hall a few steps, now whistling softly.

Cohoe returned. He was going at a good clip, eyes set on his office, but the plate caught him up short. “Hey,” he said. “Who took a bite of this cookie and put it back?”

“William did,” Hollister said. “I saw him.”

William was at his door in an instant. “I did not,” he said. “You did!”

“Don’t get so angry,” Hollister said. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a cookie. He doesn’t care if you took a bite out of it.”

“I don’t,” Cohoe said. “I was going to offer them to everybody anyway.”

“Fine,” William said. “But I didn’t. He did. I saw him.” He pointed at Hollister, voice above appropriate office volume now. He could feel a hot flush rising at his collar.

“William,” Hollister said. “I think you’re making an issue out of nothing. Just admit it.”

William stepped toward Hollister. Later, he would tell himself that he was seeing all of it hovering before him in the air—Louisa’s withdrawal, Emma’s arrival, Stevie’s guitar, the dog, the house, the kite, the slight persistent ringing in his left ear, the way he worried whenever he saw hair in the shower drain, the hundred trivial idiocies that filled the corners of each day—but the fact was that he saw only George Hollister’s small isolated nose, and his own fist as it made contact with that nose, twice, the first time tentatively, like he was practicing, the second time like he had perfected the action, feet squared and spread to shoulder width, arm straight, body twisting into the blow as it landed. William had never hit a man in this way before, and he was pleased with the quick result: blood rushed from Hollister’s nose, and though he did not fall, he staggered, cracking his head on the handle of a file drawer. Also surprising was that there was no sound, no crack or thud when fist met nose and no audible reaction from Hollister. He did not moan. He did not cry out. He receded silently from the impact, like a man being taken backward by a wind.

Noise returned. William heard Cohoe’s shocked voice at his back. Susannah Moore appeared from the break room with paper towels and shoved a stack of them forward. Hollister patted the asterisk of blood on the front of his shirt. Fitch, coming down the hall, stopped about twenty yards short of the action; he looked as though he might burst into laughter if he came any closer.

William stood his ground. His fist was still out in front of him, a reminder no one needed. Then he began to sink down slightly, as if he had suffered a slow leak. He opened his fist into a hand that might help Hollister up, but Hollister did not want his help; instead, his hand still out in front of him, William turned and walked down the hall, where he used it to press the button for the elevator and then press the button in the elevator.

On the way home he stopped at a small stucco building on the corner of Torrance and Frost, a few blocks north of the pig on the pole. It had been an upscale Mexican restaurant once but was a dive bar now, filled with dirty light. William ordered a drink and tried to strike up a conversation with an older man who was trying to extract a slice of lemon from his glass with a crooked finger. “I took a swing at my boss,” he said.

“You have a boss?” the man said. “That must mean you have a job.” He hoisted his drink. “Here’s to you.”

“That’s funny,” the bartender said, chuckling. His flesh, which hung loose around his face, shook with mirth.

“I knew you’d think so,” the man said. “You have a job, too. Laugh it up.” He released his drink and went to the bathroom. William made small talk with the bartender. He wanted the older man to return. He had a sense that if he could make even the smallest part of the world right again, the effect might spread. Finally he could wait no longer and he slid two twenties out of his wallet and told the bartender he’d pay for the man’s drinks. “You want to cover his tab, you’ll have to do better than that,” the bartender said, laughing again. He seemed like the kind of man who let nearly everything make him happy.

William stood on legs that were heavier than they should have been after a single drink. At home, on the deck, he called Fitch and asked him to keep the news under his hat. “Don’t even tell Gloria,” he said. “I don’t want to have to answer questions about it until I know exactly what’s happening.”

“Of course,” Fitch said. He was eager to be part of a plot, so long as it did not place him in any danger.

William watched Blondie down the yard, sniffing the bases of trees and putting her paws up on the edge of the tiger tub. “Stay away from that,” William said, but worse things had been in it every day.

William wondered why Congress couldn’t pass the budget. He shook the newspaper once, sitting there at the kitchen table, but nothing came loose, and he went back to the first paragraph. According to a media studies professor, it was the result of “political optics,” though two senators, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, stuck to a more traditional interpretation, blaming each other. The yen was doing bad things and people couldn’t stop it. In Cape Cod, dolphins were beaching themselves by the dozens, possibly because of increased temperatures in shallow waters.

On the bottom of the front page, there was a piece about a fire at the Sunny Isles Marina that too closely resembled the ones at the hardware store and bus station. The authorities were wondering whether the marina was a sequel to the depot. “Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of incidents with suspiciously similar fingerprints,” said the fire commissioner. “We’ve asked the police department to mobilize tactical units, which allows them to hold officers on shift.” There had been no deaths or serious injuries, only property damage. “But property damage is something,” the commissioner said. “People work hard for what they have.” William straightened up into this truth. This was the man he was, a responsible professional with a clear-headed interest in the world around him, not a disgruntled midlevel employee who had just straightened his arm into a senior executive’s face. He had learned, via e-mail, that his presence would not be needed at the office while human resources and legal measured out his fate. It would take a week, possibly longer. He sipped at his orange juice and imagined the moment when he would be asked to apologize.

“Morning,” Louisa said behind him. Her reflection in the sliding glass door rubbed its eyes. “Why are you up so early?”

“Busy day today,” he said. “Did I tell you about this investor who bailed out of TenPak?”

“You didn’t,” she said. “You probably sensed I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Well,” he said, “unless I really made the whole process clear to you, and then you’d be fascinated. People say they want a return on investment, but what they really want is the grind of the process. They want to feel their money coming or going, and most people, amazingly, don’t really care which. When the feedback stops, they lose their nerve.”

“You’re a little wound up this morning,” she said. “Is that why there’s no coffee? Did you make a pot and drink it all?”

“Funny,” he said. “No. I just couldn’t sleep and when morning came I felt ready to go.” William let a hand pet the dog’s head; it was the same hand he’d used to hit Hollister. “Want to carpool today?”

“Really?”

“Sure. I’m heading in soon, and I think I’ll be done on the early side, so I can even pick you up.” He had worked out the angles: he didn’t want to risk Louisa’s coming home early and seeing his car still there, in the driveway, so for the time being he would control whatever transport he could. “Less driving, more thriving. Save the world, save ourselves.”

After William dropped Louisa off at the museum, he made a right like he was headed to his office; then he pulled into a small parking lot a few blocks away, where he sat in front of a drugstore and watched a manager unlock the doors and turn on the lights. Nothing in the man’s gestures suggested excitement. William bought a tube of toothpaste he didn’t need and went back to the car, where he called Karla.

“What’s Christopher doing today after school?” he said. “I have kind of an easy day. Want me to pick him up and take him for a snack or something?”

“Really?”

“Sure. I had a good time at the park the other day.”

“Well, today he has a music lesson,” she said. “How about tomorrow?”

He tried not to agree too readily. “Okay,” he said.

“Sounds great,” Karla said. “Thanks. But no ice cream.”

“Don’t tell me what to eat,” he said.

The next day, a steel-gray Thursday, he arrived at school early—he had tried to drive around all day, even roamed across town in search of a sandwich shop he remembered from his youth, but he had found it too quickly—and waited outside in his car, wondering how long he had before someone grew alarmed at the sight of a man lurking on the avenue that bordered the campus. When the bell sounded, he looked for Christopher. Karla had told him exactly what corner the sixth graders used for dismissal. There was a shallow stairwell that came up from a paved play area, and at a few minutes past three a troop of children came into view, some talking to each other, some with their heads down, most looking for their grown-ups. A child with a flower on her shirt was followed by a child with confusion in his eyes, and this pattern repeated down the line, down the stairs, down through the years, forever. Christopher found the car and tried the door; William had forgotten to unlock it, and they teamed up for the lowest form of comedy, his attempt with the handle exactly overlapping William’s attempt with the lock. “Want some ice cream?” William said once Christopher was in and buckled.