The Slippage: A Novel by Ben Greenman Page B

bar, look around as if lost, and then proceed to Pete’s table: she had blond hair cut short, tan shoulders, a slight curve to her back, like an archer’s bow. She was walking away from William, mostly, but he saw that it was the woman from the convention, his friend from the lantern booth. He steeled himself with what was left of his scotch and then headed over to return Pete’s thump. “Hey,” he said.
    “Mr. Bill,” Pete said. “Meet my people.” He rounded the table counterclockwise. Alan was a mortgage broker in Ontario. Roy was a musician turned forest ranger. Ana was a Cuban artist and, apparently, Pete’s date while in town. William nodded at each description, absorbing little. The young blonde was in the middle of a conversation with a young man who was scouting locations for a new television drama about deep-sea divers. “The shadows of the palm trees are like dazzle paint,” the man said. William leaned over to shake hands. “Simon,” he said. “And this is Emma. She’s a caterer, working at the show.”
    “I’m not working it,” she said. “I’m looking for supplies for deck catering.”
    “Whatever,” Pete said. “It still doesn’t explain why she knows so much about the ocean.” William nodded, introduced himself, said that it was nice to meet everyone, looked at Emma as he said it.
    About an hour later, the waitress appeared at William’s arm to see if he wanted a refill on his whiskey, except that it wasn’t the waitress; it was Emma. “Pete was looking for you,” she said. “He wanted to know if you want to go out with a bunch of us tomorrow night.”
    “What are you?” William said. “The search party?”
    She moved up, as if by levitation, onto the stool beside him. The small band was stuck wetly in the middle of “How Long Has This Been Going On?” “I’m here,” she said, “to tell you how I know so much about the ocean.”
    She was thirty-one years old. She had been born in the eastern suburbs of New Orleans, to a chemist father who worked in an oil lab and a dancer mother, Russian-born, who had forgone her own career and opened a small studio instead. Emma had danced, too, hated it, been delivered out of bondage by injury in her late teens, had switched over to marine biology in college, and had seriously considered a career in it. “Which is how,” she said. College was Chicago and summers spent working in restaurants, and an older boyfriend who taught her to cook and encouraged her to start catering. “The money was good enough that I postponed grad school for a year,” she said. “Then it got better.” She had been a caterer for almost ten years, and had been good at it for five. “It’s the kind of thing where commitment really matters. When you run an event, it’s like conducting an orchestra. So many moving pieces.” She paused and flipped her hand outward like it was hinged. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should shut up.”
    “No,” William said. “I mean, maybe about work. I could live with that. But how about the rest of life?”
    “Ah,” she said. “The rest of life.” There was a disorderly silence and no strong indication that she wished to go on talking, though eventually she did. “Married for about two years. His name is Stevie. He works for Arrow, the car company, in marketing.” She drew a line on her forehead with a finger wet from ice. “One of his commercials was on the TV a little earlier.”
    “How did the two of you meet?”
    “At a party his company threw. I was sort of seeing another guy, but Stevie came up and started talking to me and he was attentive and funny and handsome. I was in high cotton.”
    William downed his second scotch and then a third. Emma nursed a gin fizz. It must have rained while they were in the convention center, because the sun was coming off of wet concrete, and then it was low in the sky, and then it was gone.
    “Hey,” William said. “Is that his commercial?” He pointed at the