Slide - Kyle Beachy [3]
“Situations came up.” Stuart rolled through a stop sign. “Some of them involved women who won't enter a room unless there's Talkative inside.”
Now Stuart had found an apartment. I knew this because he had sent me a series of e-mails. I knew the building dated from the turn of the last century, and was gorgeous, and classy, and likely about the most amazing apartment I had so far ever seen. The old woodwork, floors that would creak under our feet. Old Cardinals pennants hanging on the walls of his first personal home.
We drove into downtown Clayton, a mixture of ten-story office buildings and overpriced restaurants. Women in unrevealing skirts stood with jacketless men on street corners, not exactly smiling. The storm that I listened to all night had dropped leaves and small branches from the trees that lined these streets, great bodies of green flirting with squat glass towers. I was always shocked when I returned from LA to find so much color, like some regional détente with nature.
“How are those allergies?” Stuart asked.
“Allergies,” I said. “I forgot all about my allergies.”
We'd come for housewarming supplies. He parked us between two silver luxury SUVs. The plaque on the wall said: STRAUB'S MARKET: FINE GROCERS SINCE 1901. Whatever sort of place it was back then, what we stepped into was a boutique market where local families kept charge accounts, a spectrum of beige with miniature shopping carts and grated chrome shelves.
Stuart picked a jar of apricot mango wasabi sauce. “I'm guessing things didn't end well with Audrey.”
“At some point a guess stops being a guess.” “You look horrible,” he said. “What went wrong?” “Every possible thing went wrong. It was a sequence of mistakes based on various kinds of selfishness. I stand by some of my actions. Other actions I can hardly believe were mine. Remember our plan to travel after graduation? Instead, she's in Europe with Carmel for three weeks and I'm here.” “So this is punishment,” he said. “Yes. Because I am a selfish asshole prick man.” We moved to the meat counter, a thing of local legend. Two goateed men wearing white aprons eyed us suspiciously until Stuart ordered eight flank steaks and four pork loins.
“I think you're going to appreciate some of the work I've been doing. A few recent projects are investment-worthy if I can find the right people.”
It was generally assumed Stuart would work for his father, but nobody had the foggiest notion when he'd start. Two months earlier, at school, I'd received an envelope with a business card tucked inside:
Stuart Hurst
Mentation, Ideation, Formulation,
and Innovation Specialist
AND
Independent Thought Contractor
“Bringing tomorrow's ideas to the forefront of today's late afternoon.”
Mentation as employment, research in its loosest, most wandering sense. No specific hours as such, only the faith that every so often he'd stumble upon a worthwhile thought.
The store's stereo played a Bach fugue. A woman with a green basket over her arm sneezed, and at least three voices blessed her. How many of these women had had face-lifts? It was impossible for me to know. Audrey came from a family of surgeons, which meant she could tell without fail who'd gone under the knife. We'd go on day trips from campus into Hollywood to stroll Melrose and pretend to window-shop.
“Look at her neck,” she'd explain in that voice of hers. “Necks don't lie. Also notice she doesn't have earlobes.”
I carried as much Budweiser as I could and met Stuart at the checkout lane. Now the old woman in the forest-green