The Slide: A Novel by Kyle Beachy Page A

of work.
    My brain would simply not complete the steps required to imagine Audrey bald.
     
     
    How silly I’d been before this job to think I knew what it meant to sweat. I threw myself into my new labor, driving and lifting and working. And sweating . Driving brought minor relief, but with no air conditioner, the sweat was constant. To accompany the tinny sound of radio through one blown speaker, I found myself reading road signs out loud in my normal speaking voice. I passed beneath billboards with huge radio call letters and an alluring catchphrase. A lamppost banner said, Hooray™ Downtown: Progress—Fun—Character. I wore a backwards Cardinals hat stained with a mountain range of sweat. I sweated a V onto my green shirt, the kind of sweat I had previously associated with tennis pros and middle-age pickup basketball.
    Sprawl —say the word slowly and it begins to make sense. Sspraaawwwwll.
    The current goal was Oakville, on the very southern edge of St. Louis County, which bore all the signposts of regional development. Empty lots cordoned off and marked for construction, immense corner gas stations facing each other across the street, brilliantly colored and glistening new. This was my father’s competition; downtown’s offspring growing into its own self-sustaining world, the implicit patricide. All these shiny, colorful places to consume set among aboveground pools, granite quarries, baseball diamonds, and go-kart tracks. I saw my turnoff as I passed it and threw all of my weight onto the brakes, sending a vanload of hollow plastic bottles tumbling. Cars honked halfheartedly, geese on quaaludes.
    There were kids playing tag in the yard on my right, lunging and sprinting after one another like sparring hyenas. Houses here were low and wide and brick, with cramped yards and garages full of hardware and bed frames and garden hoses. I saw stubby driveways and zoysia, plastic sunflowers that would spin if there were a breeze. I idled, scanning faded mailboxes and front doors. The invoice read: T. Worpley, 1427 Waldwick. I saw 1419, 1425, then 1431. I turned the van around, then backtracked even slower than I came. I stepped out of the van. I had until recently considered myself an intelligent young man.
    Leading from the sidewalk through a swath of dead grass was a dusty brown rut barely distinguishable from the yard. At the end was a small white building, not much bigger than a garage. I lifted a cooler from the van and carried it awkwardly along the path. Nailed into wooden siding, paint chipped away in long horizontal strips, were the bronze numbers 427. I climbed two concrete steps onto a small wooden porch. Behind a screen door the house was a cave. I craned my neck to wipe a temple with an already drenched shirtsleeve, then knocked. Echoes of television garble leaked from inside. A chip of paint came loose under my fingernail. I knocked again. On the third knock a kid, maybe eleven or twelve, appeared behind the screen door.
    “You’re from the company?” He spoke carefully—candy and strangers. “You brought the free water?”
    “I am. And I did.”
    The boy held open the screen. Inside, windows were drawn and lamps were off, the TV the only source of light. The house was a phenomenal mess. An overturned floor lamp rested along one wall, a detached closet door against another. The couch in front of the TV was threadbare and saggy. There were unwashed bowls and plates stacked at the foot of the sofa, Underoos draped flaccidly across the back of a chair, a scene of sustained neglect. It looked like I imagined a frat house would look if everyone became really interested in soda.
    “Over here.”
    In the kitchen a stack of dishes sat in and around the sink. The contents of open boxes of cereal spilled across a counter sticky with residue unknown. A refrigerator sat silently in one corner, door missing and shelves barren.
    “It doesn’t work anymore. Dad knows a guy that gets fridges real cheap. The