Ben Greenman - The Slippage

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.