The Slippage: A Novel (21 page)

Tom’s clowning, Louisa’s horror: between them, William took the role of analyst. There was one car that caught his eye, a black Pontiac with a decal on the back; he’d spotted it in the reports about two different fire sites, the marina and the nursing home. “Maybe that’s something,” he said. “You heard the fire commissioner. People gather to watch a fire, sometimes the arsonist among them.”

“That seems unlikely,” Louisa said. “A guy sets a fire and then comes back to rubberneck?”

“That would be like me going to my own art opening,” Tom said.

“You do go to your own art opening,” William said. “I should call this in.”

Louisa lifted a slice of pizza emphatically. “It probably belongs to one of the reporters or a tech.”

“Oh,” William said. “Yeah. I didn’t think of that.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “To be the smart one.”

Two nights later, the commissioner was a guest on another local station, on a panel show hosted by a severely handsome black man who seemed like he was already auditioning for the national networks. Tom dropped by for that show, too, and Louisa protested lightly that the rubbernecking made her uneasy. “Come on, Mom, can we watch, please?” Tom said, and she relented and brought a Chinese takeout menu in from the kitchen. They switched on all the lamps and overhead lights in the den and sat in the center of the warm glow. “I hate to say it,” Louisa said, “but Tom was right. This is fun.”

“Tom is always right,” Tom said. “This is the life: food, friends, and things burning down to the ground.”

“Friends?” Louisa said. “How about family?”

“It’s not a word I like,” Tom said. “But have it your way.”

They weren’t the only ones who were captivated. The fires, nine in all now, were bringing everyone together. Fitch called to say he’d been at a local service station when the police had questioned and then released a young man buying a can of gasoline. Stevie, outside one morning watering the lawn, joked that he was going to wet the house down to protect it. Even Karla was hooked; she and Christopher were watching the coverage together, and she was using it to teach him about the difference between crimes against persons and crimes against property. “Did you hear the commissioner’s press conference today?” she asked William on the phone. “He said they’ve pretty much decided they’re not looking for a juvenile, based on the sites of the blazes. We’ve had a marina fire and a hardware store fire and a train station fire, and juvenile fire setters tend to target institutions—schools, churches, that kind of thing.”

“Why?” William said.

“They seek control,” she said.

“Who does?” Christopher said from the background.

“Nothing,” Karla said.

“Tell me,” Christopher said. “Please.”

“See?” Karla said.

Among the many things William didn’t understand was himself. When Emma had moved to town, he had pushed a chair against the dining room wall and stared out the front window for hours, and when he saw her, it only intensified his desire to see her again. Now he never saw her and hoped he never would; only by remaining absent could she be as important to him as when she was present. One morning in the coffee shop, he thought he spotted her standing along the back wall, looking at a painting of a girl on the beach. He shut his book, stood, and left without picking up his drink from the counter, though he had already paid for it.

He achieved his aim, in part, by staying away from his house, and that meant, increasingly, visiting the site of the new house and asking Wallace questions whose answers he didn’t understand. What were his options for supporting floor joists? Did new wireless technologies mean that the electrical phase would go more quickly? “It’s almost like you have a job again,” Louisa said.

“Except that instead of getting paid, I’m the one doing the paying.”

“Six of one, half dozen of another,” she said. “But see? I was right. It’s the thing that’s keeping you sane.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he said.

Nine was too early, and even nine thirty slightly obsessive, so William showed at ten. Wallace was there, along with Hank, his architect, and two other men William could not exactly tell apart. Hank was a rockhead, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, with very few ideas but perfect certainty about how to express them. He had a hand with at least two mangled fingers, which he held up whenever he counted things, which was often. “We’ve just done sill plate anchors,” Hank said, “and now we’re putting in the soil cover.” William nodded, and Wallace told Hank to show him what he meant, and Hank smiled sharply like someone’s unkind father and spread a blueprint out on a bench. He touched one spot and then another and William nodded again, quicker this time, like he was absorbing everything, when in fact he was watching the two workmen saw boards for the deck. The sky was clear of clouds and the sun was bright and the men joked over the sounds of their work. “I can see your house from here,” one of the men said to the other. “And your wife, too. I think I see the two of you screwing in front of the window.” The other man laughed and said something William couldn’t hear.

Wallace and Hank conferred in the space above the blueprint. “It’s the vapor retarder,” Hank said. Wallace shook his head. “I’m telling you,” Wallace said. “Joints have to be lapped. I don’t even know why there’s any discussion.” Hank nodded and Wallace turned to William. “And we might backfill the retaining wall,” he said. “And Hank has some ideas about the landscaping.”

“It’s too early for that,” Hank said, shocking William by flashing a quick smile that looked a little shy.

“Or is it too late?” Wallace said. He hummed a B-movie suspense cue.

William wondered why Louisa wasn’t visiting the lot more often. “Frankly, I’m a little insulted,” he said. “Boy meets girl, girl asks for house, boy agrees to house after being unjustly accused of dragging his feet, girl doesn’t seem to care.” He shook his head slowly enough for comedy.

“Work’s been crazy,” Louisa said. “Pick a day.”

There was a calendar hanging alongside the phone, and he stabbed a finger blindly into it. “How about . . . today?” he said. Wallace had finished the deck at the new house, and William couldn’t wait to see it.

“As long as you drop me off at work and then pick me up. No point in taking two cars all the way out there.”

“Deal.”

Louisa was waiting outside her office, sun starting to set behind her, when William arrived. He rolled down the passenger window. “Would you like some candy?” he said.

“Only if you’re a total stranger,” she said. “It doesn’t taste as good when it comes from someone you know.” William’s laugh iced over; the joke had run away from him.

The traffic on Oswald was awful, so he cut over to Pemberton—no better—and then to Rockwood, which moved at a slightly faster creep. Cars coming the other way flowed easily through the afternoon. “There’s probably an accident,” Louisa said, pointing vaguely ahead of them, and William noticed a plume of smoke snaking over the roof of a house up on the right. “Look,” he said, and Louisa did. But it wasn’t the house: the smoke, dense and black, was coming from the discount-retail mart with the statue of a pig on a pole.

William pulled the wheel and cut across a parking lot. A fire engine was already there, and one of the firemen was fitting a hose to a hydrant. They found a spot close enough that they could hear the firefighters talking to each other and he and Louisa sat and watched the place burn. The Bond Street façade was already charred; heat had melted half the struts under the sign that overlooked Lucas Avenue. The firemen were carrying cash registers and other equipment out under the sign with the huge plastic pig. William rolled down the car window to get a better sense of things, and rolled it back up immediately when he smelled the smoke: it was chemical, acrid, unvirtuous. Then one of the retail mart’s windows blew out, and the flames went like a vine up the side of the building, and the sign, its last struts melted, gave way and crashed to the pavement. The pig, thrown free, skidded out into the center of Lucas Avenue. William inched the car forward. Heat reached them through the doors. Cold air inside the car bulged to keep it away. The pig, defenseless on the pavement now, had lost a leg and one side of its face had melted flat. Louisa took his hand and touched her knee with it, and then moved it higher up on the inside of the thigh. “There’s something about a fire,” she said, burlesquing but also really feeling it.

“Prove it,” he said. But she let his hand fall free, and by the time they made it out to the lot she was stood chastely before the house like a parishioner who had come to church at off-hours just to feel the holiness of the place. That night there was another fire. They were coming closer together now. A corner of a warehouse on the east side of town had burned, damaging the contents but harming no one. “Isn’t that right near my brother’s studio?” Louisa said, and William nodded, though he had no idea. The fire had started in a trash can. A coffee cup had been stuffed with toilet paper that was dipped in gasoline. It was significantly cruder than the others, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t connected. “Sometimes, a perpetrator will try to break his own pattern to throw us off,” the fire commissioner said. It didn’t make the six o’clock news but it led at eleven.

William expected to meet Tom at Stevie’s event, but Louisa, twisting in small silver earrings, asked if they could pick him up. “There’s something wrong with his car again,” she said, fluffing her hair and frowning.

He was standing outside already, wearing a red sport coat that came off as clownish. “Hey ho,” he said, sliding across the back seat. Something sloshed in his hand.

“Is that a beer?” William said. “In my car?”

“Life just gets better.”

“That hasn’t been my experience,” William said.

“Oh, because you have it so bad,” Louisa said.

“Mom and Dad are fighting,” Tom said, and crushed the can.

The event was in a temporarily converted garage a few blocks from Louisa’s office. A sign hanging in front said
SPECIAL EVENT
in red letters. William parked in the side alley and they went in through the back door. Eddie Fitch was the first to greet them, in a narrow hallway by the bathrooms. He kissed Louisa hello and shook Tom’s hand and then hung back as they went on up the hall, bugging his eyes out at William like a bad spy in a movie. “Something’s up with TenPak,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure.” His eyes darted from side to side. “Baker’s been having lots of closed-door meetings, some with Hollister, some with the new guy, and no one looks happy when they come out.” He spotted Gloria coming down the hall. “Can’t say any more,” he said. “She’ll never stop asking questions. I’ll call you.”

Gloria leaned in, kissed the air near William and Louisa. “Are you guys going to see the talent?” she said. “He’s backstage. There’s a door over there by the stairs. I’ll take you.”

Backstage was a tiny room not much larger than a closet. The walls were a pale yellow; the floor was old tile, no longer clean; the black leather couch was the only piece of furniture, unless you counted the folding tables with a tray of carrots and celery and an ice bucket filled with beer. Emma was standing in the corner; Stevie was next to her, talking with a young female reporter who was holding a digital recorder under his mouth. “I moved here because my company said so,” Stevie said. “It was a marriage of art and commerce.” He was wearing an olive sweater, tight at the cuffs, and loose black pants. William wondered if he had his blue bike shorts on underneath.

“Art and commerce got married?” Gloria Fitch said in a loud whisper. “I know a perfect present for them: it’s a painting of a coin.”

“I just wanted to do justice to music that I loved as a child,” Stevie said. “I hope I make people remember it better rather than forget it.”

The reporter moved the recorder back under her own mouth. “Well, it seems like it’s all worked out,” she said. She pressed a button. The device beeped.

Louisa stepped in to hug Stevie. Emma was showing now, well beyond the concealing power of any outfit, and that meant that she received a different kind of hug, hands on shoulders, faces briefly brushing. William didn’t even try; he just wished them both good luck, and Stevie gave back a salute and Emma curtsied cutely, as she had at Southern Christmas.

It was time to go, but Louisa had struck up a conversation with Stevie. She was telling him how she liked what he was saying about the tree and the branches. “No one ever thinks the tree can fall,” Stevie said, and Louisa nodded, and Emma, standing behind them, met William’s gaze and slowly rolled her eyes. It was a comic gesture but also somehow seductive and Emma, sensing that, retreated behind Louisa. William watched them standing there next to each other. It gave him a sense of power, but also a sense of doubt. They were opposed: the power and the doubt, but also the two women, the taller brown-haired one he’d seen year in, year out, from nearly every angle, and the shorter, paler blonde who slipped out of focus even when he stared directly at her. Neither of them was really saying what she meant. Who was withholding the most? William was.

A young man came in to call five minutes. Stevie put his face down into the ice bucket and came up breathing hard. “See you out there,” he said.

The neighborhood lined the apron of the stage. A woman in a pantsuit came to the microphone first. She explained how Arrow Automotive had used the same theme music since 1947. “It served us well,” she said. “But last year we all agreed it was time for a change. That’s when we first heard this marvelous song. It only made things sweeter to learn that it was written by one of our regional marketing managers. Please give him a warm welcome.” Ominous electronic music swelled and dry-ice vapor floated across the stage from right to left. Then, on the screen at the rear of the stage, the image of a firework bursting open, along with a sampled thunderclap. “
Flamma fumo est proxima
,” Tom said. Stevie sprang up the shallow steps. He had changed into a black Arrow T-shirt. He looked like he’d been lifting weights. His guitar strap was patterned Navajo. “Rock star,” Graham Kenner yelled.