The Slippage: A Novel (17 page)

“It is,” he said, affecting a bored tone to cover his excitement. They talked about his work, and mostly he lied. “I’m going to see a guy from the office whose wife had a stroke,” he said. “Their son just went off to college. Good kid. Interned with us last year. He’s offered to skip a semester but none of us want that, so we’re pitching in. I figure that by helping out Al, I’m helping out the team.”

“That’s a nice idea,” she said.

“He’s been out of the office for two weeks,” he said. “I spoke to him on the phone and he’s going a little stir-crazy. His wife was that kind of person, even before the stroke: won’t let them have a television, doesn’t go out to eat very much. They had a dinner party once, and the conversation was all about whether we deserve the things we have in life, any of us. She said no.”

“Austere,” Georgina said. It wasn’t a word he expected. She told him about her boyfriend, who she wanted to marry her, but who she suspected would never ask. “He has to be scared into it,” she said. “That’s what my mother says, that he needs a wake-up call.” As the train pulled in, she jotted down her phone number on the back of the agency card. She had seen his wedding ring but had not remarked upon it. Did she figure him for a wake-up call?

The lawyer’s office, three blocks from the station, had a poorly lit waiting room with a quartet of round brown club chairs. William had been there once before, to secure advice on a threatened suit by a freelance editor; then, like now, he’d spent most of his time leafing through fitness magazines and counting the starbursts around the edge of the rug on the floor. Across a plastic partition, a woman with big hair and small glasses tapped violently on a keyboard.

A man came into the room. He was taller than any man William knew; though he was old and stooped, he was still nearly six and a half feet. “Mr. Day,” he said.

William stood. “Mr. Reeser,” he said.

“Call me Marshall,” the man said, as he had every time, never meaning it. Walking with practiced significance, Reeser ushered him into a room. “We have associates with bigger offices, but I started in an office this size and I will die in an office this size. Though hopefully not today.” It was the same line he had used during their last meeting, but William laughed charitably. Reeser squeezed in between the desk and the chair.

“Now, listen,” he said. He put his hands palms up in what seemed like supplication. “We’ve known each other for a long time, William.”

“We have.” Reeser was Hollister’s head counsel and had been the kingliest presence in the company for years.

“And in all that time, have you ever known me to be anything but a straight shooter?”

“I have not.”

“Well, then, let’s get down to cases. We have a problem here. You struck a man. Scratch that. You struck an upper-level executive, the nephew of the founders.”

William raised a palm to slow Reeser, or identify himself. “I don’t know if I can explain, really. It seems trivial. But he wasn’t telling the truth. It was unimportant, I realize. But doesn’t it matter that he was lying?”

“I can understand,” Reeser said. “I’ve met George. But you know: breaking a wheel for a spoke.” He placed both hands on the desk. On a credenza against the wall there was a picture of Reeser, younger, with Hollister’s uncle Leon, a tired old small-faced man of extreme competence. “The fact remains that the two of you can no longer work together, and another fact remains as well: he is in charge of your department.” He made a flourish with the pen: more sprezzatura. “So look. Listen. Specifics here don’t matter. The general picture, as painted, is bleak. He’s a made man at this company, and that means that you’re out.”

“Out of Domesta?”

Reeser’s eyes crinkled and it looked as though he might leap out from behind his desk and clap William on the back. “Can you believe it?” he said. “
Domesta
. Thirty years as Leon’s lawyer and I’ve never heard anything so stupid. Yes, out of Domesta. But not just that. Out of the whole thing, I’m afraid. Gone from Hollister. Cashiered.” Reeser pressed a button on his telephone and a young woman in a white skirt appeared with a slim sheaf of papers clipped together at the corner. “Read to yourself as I read aloud,” Reeser said. “‘This letter will confirm our discussions to resign your present position with Hollister, effective June 1. In light of your many years of service to the company, Hollister is prepared to offer you a severance payment equivalent to one year’s salary, and to carry your full benefits for that same term. Confidential information, as defined below, shall not be disclosed for the term of two years, upon penalty of forfeit both of severance and benefits. In entering into this Agreement, the parties have intended that this be a full and final settlement of all matters, and that all related disputes be hereby dissolved. This letter will confirm our offer. Please take some time to review and consult with counsel or advisers of your choice.’” Reeser looked up. “Do you have counsel or advisers?”

“Let me understand,” William said. “You’re paying me because I hit George Hollister?”

“It’s not just that,” Reeser said. “There are matters that you might be privy to that we want to keep under wraps.”

“Like what?”

“Like anything. Business strategies. Things you’ve heard. Anything. Everything.” He lowered his eyes to the paper again and continued to read. “‘If this proposal is acceptable, please indicate your acceptance by signing and returning the duplicate copy of this letter and the accompanying legal release.’”

William reached for the pen. Reeser got there first, held it out like a baton in a relay. “Counsel?” he said. “Advisers?”

“I think I’ve heard plenty,” William said. He signed his name with as much ink as possible.

William had not thought of Emma most of the morning, but he thought of little else once he was out of Reeser’s office, sitting in the park, watching the squirrels watch him. A girl in a blue dress fed ducks as her mother looked on with a mix of adoration and disapproval. The mother had a piece of paper folded on her lap. She was slim, pale. The girl was darker. She had the mother’s large eyes and a scar on one cheek, along with something else: a focus. She looked at the ducks as if she were learning them. She tossed a few more crumbs onto the ground. The ducks rushed toward the scatter and the girl followed after them. The mother took out a cigarette, thought better of it, returned it to the pack.

William remembered back to the first afternoon in Emma’s house. She had a cigarette then, in bed, and pretended to light it. “Isn’t this what people do in stories?” she said.

He corrected her. “I think you mean it’s what people do in movies,” he said. “In stories there’s usually just a break after the sex.”

She propped herself up on her left forearm. He ran a finger from one shoulder blade to another. “Do it in the shape of a wave,” she said.

“When you do a wave, how high and how low should you go?” he said. “I should ask Tom.”

“Tom?”

“My brother-in-law. That’s what he does for a living.”

“Oh,” she said. “Don’t. I’m one of those girls who thinks three’s a crowd.”

“You mean four,” he said, patting her stomach.

That froze her, and when she thawed, she moved without ease. He flipped her onto her back and began to trace another plot with his finger. She was cheered when the graph dipped too low.

Now, in the city, William watched the daughter, the mother, two teenagers playing cards, a gardener placidly dropping grass seed in a brown patch of the park. He came out from the canopy of trees and went to the station. Normalcy had been restored, in the sense that William was once again immersed in the mix of obligation and randomness that dominated his days and the days of nearly everyone he knew. He opened his phone to find the envelope icon blinking, read a text from Louisa reminding him of their plans, consulted the train schedule on a terminal, watched a few minutes of television in the bar, double-checked the schedule on the big board: rectangles of increasing size. The volume on the television was off, but the images were loud enough without any sound, a vulgar clutter of ugliness and beauty. There was no way to put it together faster than it was all coming apart.

“Hello,” Louisa said when he came through the door. She was at the kitchen table with a mug that said
FULL OR ELSE
. “How was your day?”

“Got a raise, sort of,” he said.

“Great,” she said.

“Good enough,” he said. “I got your message about Jim. We’re still on?”

“No,” she said. “He called to cancel. He said his wife didn’t feel well.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I asked him what the matter was and he said he wasn’t sure, a stomachache or something. We had a plan and everything. Who cancels a plan two hours before it’s supposed to happen?”

“Lots of people,” William said. “People with sick wives. We’ll catch them the next time.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’re right. I’m making too much of it.”

In bed, he couldn’t sleep, and he watched her. Her eyes were closed and her fingers worked the air, untying something he could not see. He put his hands near hers and was surprised, as always, to find that they were not very much larger. He stretched a finger until it tickled the crease of her wrist and watched her eyes, which did not open. Maybe she was genuinely asleep. He didn’t need any rest anymore, only a clear path out of the fog, and he was determined to stay up all night looking if that was what it took.

William wanted the octopus to emerge. They had teased the scene before going to commercial: a small orange fish was swimming by, largely unaware, and the octopus was camouflaged behind a pair of rocks. “I know how to cook them, you know,” Emma said. “I’m a professional caterer.” She was standing in front of her bedroom mirror naked, considering the swell of her belly. William was in bed, over the sheets, not naked anymore. “Not that it makes any difference. I go to the supermarket and see fliers for other businesses: the Full Plate, Ambassador Meals. There are so many and I can’t imagine how I’ll ever get back among them again. The other day I walked by some event hall and there was a line of catering trucks out in the street. I had to lean against a tree.”

“Event halls,” William said. “I remember those.” He got up off the bed. The sheets did not feel right against his skin.

“I am doing my best to think impure thoughts,” Emma said, “and send them across the room to you.”

The transmissions didn’t reach William but he got the message anyway. Sometimes he came right back at her, his face displaying the heat of attraction. Sometimes he lay out and waited for her to make a move. Usually what happened was blurry with speed, but he could keep it in focus if he squinted. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “you’re good at catering to me.”

She scowled. “You always say the sweetest things,” she said. And then, “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Emma told him that sex helped to open things up, and that they had cut a key and were in the process of using it. She had unsuccessfully tried to convince him to expand to other locations; the most he would agree to was a call while he was in his car. He stayed on the phone while she touched herself. “That was a lark,” she said, but a lark was a bird, and she didn’t know a damn thing about birds. William said he didn’t think they could do that again. “Why are you afraid?” she said. “Don’t be a little girl.”

They were three weeks into it, maybe four. There was no consensus on the matter. He marked the start from the moment he had offered to take her home rather than for coffee. “Just like a man,” she said. “So literal.” She measured from the cooler at Gloria Fitch’s house, when he’d bent down for a beer and seen her legs. “Admit that you wanted me then,” she said. He pointed out that he’d wanted her—had known her—since Chicago. Why not date things from then?

“Because you’re stupid,” she said, showing she was teasing with a quick sharp smile. “Isn’t that how you want it?” she said.

“I want it under control,” he said.

“What are you worried about? Other people? Again, stupid.”

She was right. William had imagined whispers in the street and women in restaurants cutting their eyes at him, but the neighborhood had surprisingly few suspicions. He’d been careful about where to meet and where to part; even when people gossiped about Emma, William never appeared in the story. Gloria Fitch had come over to drink martinis with Louisa on the deck and say several terrible things, most of them true, about the way Stevie moved his attractive young wife from one town to the next, never caring about her happiness. “He acts like he’s the most important man in the world,” Gloria said. “I keep thinking I’m going to see that woman dragging a suitcase to a bus and hotfooting it back to Chicago.” William told this to Emma. “I would get someone to drive me to the bus station,” she said. “She’s a fool.” She was mad at Gloria Fitch, she said, because she felt she couldn’t be mad at Louisa, at least not in front of William. She was mad at Louisa because Louisa had said several nice things about Stevie. She was mad at Stevie because, as Gloria said, he had brought her out of Chicago into the wilderness. Above all, she was mad at herself for being the kind of woman who would put herself in a position where two women in the neighborhood could meet on a deck and pity her. “Like their lives are anything to envy.”

“Gloria Fitch’s is,” William said. “She seems to be drinking all the time.”

Emma stayed in front of the mirror. “Hey,” she said. “You know what they showed in one of those ocean documentaries? A montage of marine animals ejaculating.”

“Wow,” William said. “When you talk dirty, you don’t play around.”

“Seriously,” she said. “It’s interesting how fluids go through liquids.” This led directly to a suggestion regarding the bathtub. He took her up on it, to a point; she went into the tub and he sat on the edge, watching. “When I came,” she said later, “I wondered about the baby. Does it feel any part of what I’m feeling?” He tried to imagine it for himself but could not even get a picture in his head. What could he think that would not be a bright light blinding him? “I know you don’t know,” Emma said. “I’m just saying. Don’t be a fool.” She used the word liberally, which took away its sting, and then she put her arms around her swollen belly and told William that she was going to do her best to make the child inside her anything but a fool.