The Slippage: A Novel by Ben Greenman Page A

“I have a cousin here,” he said. “She’s young, and her friends are even younger. They know a bar near here.” The bar was lined by curved wooden beams, and after hours spent watching young women pretending to resist the advances of men, William began to feel the whole place sinking. “I’m feeling tired,” he told Pete, who was making inroads with a pale girl whose face was tilted up to show long thin nostrils. He went back to the hotel and slept partly dressed, atop the comforter.
    The second day was William’s first in the crass cathedral of the convention hall. All around him, farther than he could see, people stood hawking additions to decks, techniques for perfecting them, plans for care and upkeep. One woman sprayed a piece of wood with what looked like silver paint. Another demonstrated fireproofing by holding a match to a square of fabric from lawn furniture. A tall redhead, in a blindingly pink bikini, struck a bored pose in a hot tub that had no water in it.
    William looked at post caps in the shape of lions and welcome mats that showed pictures of famous baseball players and lawn sculptures of fantastical animals like unicorns and dragons. Eventually he came to a booth that displayed craftsman lanterns decorated with regional filigree: one set had a Western theme, cacti and cowboys, another mountains and pines, a third a lobster and a sailboat. A young blond woman was also in the booth. When she turned around, she showed bright eyes beneath dark eyebrows and a full, rounded mouth that contained teeth that were neither too small nor too white.
    “I’m just browsing,” he said.
    “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no. I don’t work here. I thought you did.” She sounded Southern, but lightly so.
    “No,” he said. He put on a loud stage whisper. “We can steal these lanterns and run.”
    She reached out and touched the nearest lantern. “I wish they had the whole New England set out. I might steal that. But this is an odd assortment, one of each. It’s all over the place. I wonder if there are other booths that have the same thing but different.”
    Together they went to explore. At the next booth, surf music was playing from speakers hidden in plastic rocks and a small man with a flowered bow tie was bending and straightening, bending and straightening. Looking closer, William saw that he was applying a sheet of PVC to a flat surface. “Imagine this is a balcony,” he said. “We treat them like they’re roofs. We lock the PVC in place mechanically, using trained applicators, because we have learned over thirty-five years not to trust adhesives.”
    “I’ve learned the same thing,” the woman said. “But with men.”
    The small man blinked. “We’ve put down more than a hundred million square feet of this material.”
    Deep in the hall someone dinged a digital bell.
    “Well,” the woman said. “I think I hear a Sunbrella calling my name.”
    “Which is what?” William said. But she was too far to hear.
    The end of the day’s program was signaled like an intermission, a tug on the lights to dim them. William went to the hotel bar, where a small combo measured out mediocre jazz and the pretty bartenders brightened coldly in anticipation of the coming tide. What was William drinking in those days? What wasn’t he drinking? Probably he started with scotch. He liked the way it glowed in his glass and even the way he hated the smell. Pete popped up on the other side of the bar, came to thump William on the back, said he was sitting in the back with some friends and William should join them. From a distance, William gave Pete’s group the once-over: two older men, one older woman, one younger man. They laughed and tipped forward into the light, which was not what he had in mind. He spoke to the bartender for a little while. She was trying to break in as an actress. “I can do either comedy or drama,” she said, doing neither.
    Midway through his second glass, William saw a woman step into the