The Slide: A Novel by Kyle Beachy

smiling now at my appearance. I sensed that these women all knew something I didn’t, a secret gained through the emergence from the wreck of failed marriage. I remembered that this was supposed to be a book club, and I began to worry for my mother, slumming it with these divorcées. What kind of influence was this? Quiet comparisons going on across the room, inquiries into my life, my plans.
    “Yes,” I answered. “Still with the same girl.”
     
     
    Later I sat with Stuart at the pool’s deck table, the candle’s orange flame glowing into an otherwise silver dusk. I was admiring the abrasions on my hands, the blisters-turned-open-wounds. I watched my friend lean forward to light a cigarette from the candle, then held one of my hands up for him to see. He squinted and nodded approvingly.
    “I have to like what you’ve done about work. I’m impressed, Poot.”
    “Mostly I needed a steady reason to get out of the house. There’s something afoot in that home, something weird.”
    “Let’s linger a second on these hands of yours,” he said. “How did you and Audrey treat the holding-hands question?”
    “We disagreed,” I said.
    Our respective heights were such that to hold hands while walking, I would have to effect a slight shrug, or lean just a little bit away from her, in order for our hands to meet. I had on several occasions tried to explain this to her.
    “Then how about standing still?” she countered. “It would I guess kill you to take my hand once in a while just to say hello.”
    And I said, side by side? Standing still and holding hands as if overlooking some gorgeous view?
    “It’s not some mystery or riddle, Potter. You know how much I like it.”
    But over time I began to suspect it wasn’t about liking at all. For Audrey, holding hands represented a sort of proof, and I sometimes took exception to this ongoing need to prove what should otherwise be assumed.
    But that was love, she told me. That’s what I didn’t understand about proof.
    “You think it’s some like chore. When really it’s supposed to be a joy. That’s love: proving over and over. Lovers hold hands because they want to. If it feels like work, then it’s not proof.”
    And one morning, I remembered, she woke me with an elaboration on this point and spoke of an isolated beach she imagined, a trite piece of Caribbean fantasy. She must have been awake for a while. In her fantasy we woke up each morning and had our sweaty sex in the bamboo hut, or lean-to, or however she saw it. Then we would gather our things and walk to the beach, holding hands the whole way.
    “And then you go fishing while I sit down with needles and yarn, because I love you, and I want to knit you a cap.”
    “Knit cap,” I said, rolling over. “On the beach.”
    “Shut! Up! Look. I sit down in the sand and make something for the man I love. Anything. And I watch you go down to the rocks and stand over the water with your spear, and this is how the morning goes. I knit and you fish. And then at some point I hear you scream out in joy, and I look to see you smiling at me, holding up the spear with our breakfast on it. And you are smiling hugely and bursting and overcome with joy.”
    “So in this fantasy I’m the hunter and you’re the domesticator. Meanwhile, you’re about to have a minor in women’s studies .”
    “It’s our beach, Potter. It’s all ours and there’s no one there but us. No eyes no nothing, just us. Nobody is watching and we hold hands because we want to. No other reason. We made the view, it’s ours, and we hold hands because from where we’re standing, the world is a beautiful view. Do you see?”
    Stuart left briefly and returned with two more beers. I held the cold can between my injured hands. The labor was good, he had said so himself. No need to rehash these details of our past, or of Audrey’s postponed return, the metallic balls. I opened the beer and sat there with my friend, quietly, resting after a day