Slide - Kyle Beachy [31]
“I'd love a piece of that cake if there's any left.”
“The cake didn't come together. We were up all night talking. It was frankly astounding how easy it all was. We spoke like this was our fourth lifetime together. Do you know Cuba? About an hour southwest of here, down 44 toward Rolla. Parents are literal farmers of the American heartland. I dozed off around eight, then woke at noon to find her lying out here. I told her that stepmother Deanna might get jealous and handed her a swimsuit. I think she's planning on staying and I don't think I mind. She has a farmish ease about her that rubs off on the whole poolside. Don't you feel calm? I for one feel calm.”
I thought of our OA circle that first night, our group of children on the cusp of institution. I had a feeling then, even before school did something to me, a feeling of our cute little circle as gateway, a momentary figuration of bodies that pointed outward (upward?) to bigger circles, a series of expanding circles that began precisely then and would terminate eight semesters later. An experience to be bookended, a single happening that would also be a thousand. Nameless figure, female and with shoulders at my ten o'clock, to whom I would soon hand over everything. And then gradually thieve back.
Stuart held the joint between his lips and patted his shorts for a lighter. I watched the topless girl rise from the lounger, breasts exposed and bouncing a little with each step toward the table. Various articles over the years had named the Schnucks supermarket on Clayton Road a Top 5 Local Spot to Meet Singles. The girl pulled out a chair and nodded at me as if from beneath a Stetson. When he passed the joint, the girl received it in her open palm, so quaintly wrong a gesture I immediately liked her. She took a shallow pull and closed her eyes. The sacred red and white Budweiser cans sweat condensation. I allowed myself quick glances at her breasts. In a vacuum, such indulgences of the body seemed vain and flauntingly arrogant. But something about this girl's demeanor, her generously plain face and peacefully closed eyes, made it okay. Stuart's past relationships were brief codependen-cies with gorgeous but hideous New York daughters linked to inheritances in the range of his own. Here was a girl bred within the ethos of our middle land, reared among field and stream and earnestness. Others wore nudity like some costume, but not her. I looked at Stuart, then back to her, and had to give them credit for such brazen disregard for the regime of time.
But my watch said it was time to go back to the warehouse. I had to empty the empties from the van, break down cardboard boxes and fill out paperwork, return home to shower away the job's evidence, and prepare for the night's Cardinals game.
“I am too much in the sun. What about tonight? I hope you don't mind driving.”
“I enjoy driving,” Stuart said to the topless brunette.
“To the game, I mean. A sea of red. Beer delivered from the brewery to the stadium through a system of subterranean pipes.”
“That's right, yes, game tonight.” Now some gear clicked and he turned to me, and there was his crook-toothed smile. “I've got to go pick something up and I'll come get you. Oh Jesus are you going to love this.”
Walking backward with tired, swollen arms spread outward, I watched the two of them battle for the joint, the Missouri girl's eyes focused on my friend.
There were caterers wearing tuxedos moving through the kitchen. I sat at the counter and thought of Freddy in the attic and his top-down vantage. Because I assumed Freddy had X-ray vision, and that sometimes he watched us with judgment in his eyes, sometimes shaking his head at the preposterous fancies of the living. My mother waded among the tuxedos, overseeing and occasionally salting a dish.
When my father came home the circus reached a new level of absurdity the caterers suddenly torn between who to fear and respect. My mother still essentially running things, my father