The Slippage: A Novel by Ben Greenman

went down the hall. The hall was endless. The junk room door was closed. He put a knuckle to it but got no answer, though he thought he heard the faint strains of the music box. He had better luck with the bedroom door. “Yes?” Louisa asked.
    “I found this bag you left here.”
    “What bag?”
    “The giant bag of mail and things. What do you want me to do with it?”
    “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. And then, “Deal with it, I guess.”
    He removed the spring top of the trash can, slid it to the corner of the counter, and started transferring the contents of the bag: catalog, catalog, magazine, catalog, magazine, bottle cap. He put the baseball cap on his head.
    On the back of one catalog, stuck diagonally, there was a cream-colored envelope, note card size. He peeled it free. His name was handwritten across the face, and the return address was one he didn’t recognize, from Chicago. He scrutinized the cancellation, which was dated more than three months ago. He looked again. He had seen his name written that way before, with a loop atop the central peak of the W. He could not think of the hand that made the loop but thought he might if he concentrated. Concentrating meant overlooking the pooling noise of the refrigerator, the thrum of a car going by, Blondie’s barking and the distant commiserating howl of some other dog. But it came to him. And when it finally did, it came with force, and his knees rubbered out from under him.

A little more than a year before, William had been in the same position, though it was nighttime, and the air was cool from recent rains. Louisa drank coffee and read the paper. Blondie toyed with a bug she had trapped between her paws. William set up an old boom box that was busted unless you put a foot on it to hold the cassette door closed. That’s what he was doing, and singing along: “Would you miss your color box, and your soft shoe shining?”
    “Don’t sing,” she said. “It offends my ears.” He whistled instead, and his favorite bird joined in above, the one that sounded like a firework. “Hey,” Louisa said, shaking the paper, “here’s one thing that might interest you: it’s an article about a deck and porch trade show in Chicago next month.”
    “What exactly do you think of me?”
    She laughed. “It looks pretty impressive. You should go.” She started reading, suddenly serious on his behalf. “‘For two days in July, the convention center will be host to the world’s largest deck and porch event . . .’ See? It’s an event . You would have a good time. I’ll buy you the tickets, even.”
    “With my money? You’re too good to me. Are you trying to get rid of me?”
    “I’m trying to be nice to you. You like these kinds of things, even when you don’t admit it.”
    “I admit it,” he said. He pulled her chair to his and brushed his fingertips along the side of her head.
    “Put your mouth where your fingers were,” she said. The surface of her face did not change except to admit that there was more beneath it. She led him, her fist around a single finger of his. That was all it took sometimes.
    He got in under the wire for conference registration, overstuffed an overnight bag—toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, two days’ worth of clothes, phone, cord, a few books in the corners—and drove himself to the airport, filling with the lightness he always felt before a trip.
    Coming down in the plane over Chicago William read the city as a text, each block a paragraph, each building a word. What did that make the people? Characters, maybe.
    He checked into the hotel and then wandered back downstairs, past the tables with fliers, the posted schedules, a banner connected to another convention advertising something called “Legislative Karaoke.” In the hotel lobby, he struck up a conversation with a fellow conventioneer named Pete, who had inherited a series of camping lodges in Wisconsin. Pete convinced him to come out for drinks.