Free Tilt by Alan Cumyn Page B

pressed pants, but with the sorry yellow knitted slippers she tended to wear around the house. Little pom-poms bounced when she thudded across the floor.
    â€œI don’t know if she kicked him out or not!”
    The smoke alarm sounded then. Not the family-room alarm, which was closest, but the upstairs-landing alarm. Stan called out to Lily to whack it with the broom.
    â€œYou’re going to have to do it yourself,” Stan’s mother said.
    He only had batter left for another few pancakes. “Lily!”
    â€œIt’s a madhouse here,” his mother said into the phone.
    Stan charged up the stairs and swatted the alarm off the ceiling. It howled on the floor until he pried it open with his fingers and released the battery into silence.
    â€”
    Later, when the blackened remains of dinner had been cleared away, the three of them, the rump of a family, watched a dating show on television in which former celebrities tried to give romantic advice to contestants whose prize was to end up with each other in full public view. Even Lily stayed quiet, hypnotized by the quick cuts, the glitzy narration, the thunderous commercials. Here was a troubled young woman lying on her bed in semi-darkness — without pants, for some reason, the whites of her legs glimmering — moaning about how easily she’d shed her clothes, and was she too inviting, and would he ever call the number she had made sure he had?
    â€œThe weirded-out thing is,” she said, “like, do I even like this guy? Is it, like, too late to be asking?”
    She was wearing bangley earrings and her lips seemed puffed out. Nothing about her was attractive except . . . 
    Â . . . except Stan felt himself possessed of a ridgepole for no good reason whatsoever.
    Sitting on the sofa with his mother and his sister as this young woman in her underwear moved her legs.
    Where was the blanket? On the back of the sofa.
    The young woman said, “Sometimes I just really want to jump a guy and I have no idea why.”
    Stan twisted to retrieve the blanket, trying hard not to press — anything — against anybody.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” his mother said. Waking up from some thought.
    The young woman wiggled her butt and said, “There’s nothing wrong with, like, healthy sexuality. But I really should be able to remember his last name.”
    Stan settled the blanket on his lap. The young woman disappeared, replaced by a ripped guy pumping weights in the gym who said, “She let me in, why wouldn’t I?”
    â€œLily, I don’t think you should be watching this,” his mother said. She picked up the remote and pressed a button. Nothing happened.
    â€œWhy not? Why can’t I?” Lily howled.
    â€œStanley? Stanley, can you fix this?”
    Stan took the remote. The veins in his head throbbed as he skipped through from show to show.
    Lily hit him with the pillow.
    â€œBut I want to see it!” The blanket shifted and Stan pulled it back.
    He stayed exactly where he was, waiting for the bubble of the evening to settle somewhere and die.
    â€”
    In the middle of the night, long after he’d gone to bed but failed to sleep, Stan sat on the front porch in the chilly air, his feet near freezing, bare on the wood. He fingered his father’s phone.
    It glowed in chill darkness. He hit the buttons.
    â€œHello?” came a voice at last. “Lily? Is that you?”
    â€œHi, Ron.” Stan shocked himself addressing his father that way, and yet — why not?
    â€œOh,” Ron said.
    Breathing on the other end. The street lamps, everything, so still.
    â€œIt was good to see you today, son,” Ron said. “I’m sorry to surprise you like that. I just saw the . . .  ad, for the bus fares —”
    â€œDoes it get any better?” Stan blurted. Was that his question?
    More breathing at the other end of the line. Stan thought he could hear