Free The Slippage: A Novel by Ben Greenman Page A

consequential in the world. “Get yourself a house,” she said. “Don’t be a coward.”
    He flew out for her funeral within the year, made remarks at her graveside to no real effect, and put a bid in on a house—a modest one-bedroom with a small screened porch on the north side of town. When the Realtor called him to tell him the place was his, he was at his desk at the advertising agency where he worked as a copywriter, and he went to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror.
    His first night there, he brought a girl over to help him christen the place. The girl was Karla, and she lay down on an air mattress, which was all he had, in her underwear, which was all she had. “Certificate of occupancy,” he said, pointing at the deed, and she laughed and bucked up her hips rakishly. “You may own the house,” she said, “but you’re a renter here.”
    Then Louisa, returning to him, had taken him away from all that, into what she insisted was his first true home. He found himself agreeing without feeling any inner snag or catch. Was that love? Now, in the dim afternoon light beneath the clouds that would not rain, she came outside, having forgiven him for the fight of the night before, carrying mugs in both hands as proof.
    “Thanks,” he said.
    “No problem,” she said. “It’s not very good coffee.” She leaned on the rail. “Looks like the people who bought the Johnson place are finally moving in,” she said. “I saw a man the other day. About our age, short, hairy.”
    “A caveman?” he said. “In that case, I would definitely consider getting out of here. Drives down property values.”
    “Funny, but not so funny,” she said. “Let me read you something. I was going to read this out at the lot the other day, but I lost my nerve.” She took a piece of paper out of her pocket. “‘We make a pact with another person to follow as far as they go, but we do not really mean it. We mean that we will follow so long as we do not start to feel lost. Love, or what passes for it, is about believing that we are never truly lost.’”
    “That’s nice. Who wrote that?”
    “I did, in college. I found it the other day during the party.”
    “I’m glad you were keeping busy.”
    Louisa turned, the paper still in her hand, and he thought she was going to start in on the idea of a new house again. But speculation was running ahead of evidence. She sat down without a word. Adjacent yards supplied the sounds of children.
    The next day, he woke early, kissed Louisa good-bye, and made like he was going to work. Instead he drove to the triangular park on the corner of Keeler and Martin, where he sat and watched knives of light pierce the surface of a small lake.
    Louisa and William had come to this lake during their first try at love, twenty years before. They passed the time naming ducks, or rather William did, mostly for historical figures. The one in front of the line, looking around imperiously: Churchill. The one in the water, flapping its wings: Archimedes. The one off to the side, tilting its head and considering a family at a picnic table: Albert Einstein. Louisa named them all Duck, and every once in a while pointed excitedly into the middle of the pack and shouted, “Goose!”
    He had crisscrossed the town hundreds of times over the years, never with any particular emotion, but now it contained the possibility of loss—or, rather, he saw the possibility of loss that had always been there—and it made him sad. That was the apartment building where, twenty years before, he and Louisa had considered renting a place. That was the tree where he had pretended to carve their initials. That was the Italian restaurant where he had thought to take her during their first relationship, but she had broken up with him and he had never been able to work up the courage. Most of these, he conceded, were somewhat abstract.
    He crossed back through town in search of more concrete examples. There was a park bench