The Slippage: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

the flat broad lawn, which was under the care of the Realtor and as a result far healthier and more manicured than it had ever been when Ron Johnson lived there.
    Louisa was on the phone in the other room. Her voice rose and fell in angry waves. He put her cup of coffee on the counter and drank the rest of his.
    “Back already?” she said, coming into the kitchen. “Someone’s here, cleaning. Your doing, I assume?”
    “I thought it’d make things easier.” Louisa, who could be lenient to the point of indifference about much of the house, was obsessed with keeping the kitchen in order, and so the day before, in a burst of foresight, William had arranged for a cleaning lady. The woman had arrived promptly at eight and stood with him on the deck. Beer bottles lined the edge of the railing; paper plates dotted the long table. Both had a faintly musical arrangement. William apologized for the mess, and she smiled. “Without mess, I don’t work,” she said. “This is three hours at least.” Excitement clotted her voice.
    “I’ll go check on her,” William said. But she was on a cigarette break, and he went down into the yard, where he found the whiskey bottle Tom had thrown. Ants rioted around it. In the house to the south, the boy who spoke to his parents as if they were children was already awake. He was crouched behind an overturned bench with a foam dart gun, carefully watching as another boy, a friend, pressed himself flat against the trunk of a tree. William copied the posture against the big tree in the corner of his own yard, but there was no one coming for him. One of the birds whose name he didn’t know chirped loudly in the tree just overhead; its song was an exclamation point with feathers, a sharp whistle that went straight up.
    In the kitchen, he paged through the newspaper, not quite reading. Louisa, spoon in hand, appraised a grapefruit that was titanic by any standard. “Hey,” William said. “How about that party?”
    “How about it?” Louisa said.
    “You should have come out earlier.”
    “I had my reasons,” she said.
    “I don’t doubt that,” said William, even though he did. “So what were you doing that whole time?”
    “What was I doing? I don’t know. I read a little. I went onto my computer to listen to the radio, or whatever they call it now. If I’d known what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have waited so long. I would have loved to see everyone before Tom went into the drink,” she said.
    “You mean the tub?” William said.
    “I mean the drink,” she said. “That’s the last time we have a party for him.”
    “I hope he got home okay.”
    “He does his damage before he gets into the car. He’s the world’s oldest living child.”
    William lowered the newspaper. “Says the younger sister.” Louisa pinched her mouth into a frown. “Seriously,” he said. “Do you think it’s okay that you hid out for the whole party?”
    “Why?” she said. “Did you miss me?” She stood up and poured out her coffee, which was still mostly full. She wore tight aqua sweatpants that had not always been that tight and a cheerful pink T-shirt from the gift shop of the local history museum, where she worked as a curator.
    “We’re supposed to be in this together.”
    “You seem like you came through it with flying colors,” she said without turning around.
    “Says who?”
    “You don’t really want to fight about this, do you?”
    “Fight, no. Talk, maybe.”
    “You don’t really want to do that either.” She fit herself into a safe place by the kitchen wall. “It was one party. I didn’t make it out. No need to enter it into the permanent record.” Her fingernails tattooed the countertop with a series of rapid taps.
    “Fair enough.”
    “I’m going to shower and head to the grocery store.”
    “I’m fixing some things around the house,” he said. “One of the lanterns on the deck is cracked, and the inside wall of the garage is damaged.”
    “The