Slide - Kyle Beachy [44]
The girls wore flip-flops and kept their hair up in jubilant ponytails. They went for hour-long elbows-out walks because you only get one set of knees.
Stuart said, “A kid I knew at Brown is devoting his summer to visiting every major-league ballpark.”
“The fuck for?” Eric said.
Sometimes I imagined pissing on Eric's face.
“My thought is he believes it will keep him alive longer.” Stuart raised his hands and gestured. “Checking them off of his list.”
“He should practice yoga,” Melissa said.
“Consider the raw vigor of a professional baseball game,” Stuart said. “Twenty-eight stadiums in one summer, bypassing two in Canada. You average, what, twenty-some thousand people per game? We're looking at serious life exposure.”
I watched shirtless Edsel throw four horseshoes, then make his way over to our table. There was something always vaguely threatening about the slowness with which he'd approach. The predator bearing calmly down.
Stuart finished the Relaxation with one grand pull. “Going to a ballpark on game day is like putting death on hold while you click over to see who's on the other line. Once the summer's over and he's seen the parks, I'm going to sit down with him and have a nice long talk. See if he feels more alive. My guess is yes.”
Eric said, “You want to feel alive? Contribute. Put on a pair of slacks and go to work.”
And I thought, Just because you and your future wife say fuck back and forth, it doesn't mean I have to respect you. I watched the ogre squeeze the tennis ball in his palm. Every now and then he caught my eye and twisted his face into some rictus of I couldn't tell what because of the beard: joy, pain, mockery, repulsion.
“Contribute,” Eric said. “Save the nonsense for retirement.”
I lit a cigarette and held it between my lips. Grasping the wrought-iron chair, I turned my torso severely to the right, stretching my sore back. Matt and Eric had moved to floating re-cliners, their distended stomachs baking like flesh muffins in the summer heat. For a moment they appeared not as peers but as decaying matter, two assortments of biological dross wasting in the sun, slowly and relentlessly advancing toward death. I put out the cigarette and stood.
“I think I'll go for a drive.”
Stuart walked with me. “Marianne will be here soon. I've gone over my list and I believe Matt, Eric, and Edsel are the only three remaining male friends she hasn't met. I am abiding by her wishes to the fullest of my ability. Whatever middle-Missourian ritual this is, I want to honor it. I've begun revealing things to her that I never intended on revealing to anyone. Deeply held beliefs, shameful admissions of misconduct. The goal is an unprecedented version of nakedness. Physical nudity was almost immediate with us. The curtain was yanked back and she shrugged her shoulders, said of course. What's the naked human form to a girl who woke at dawn to milk cows? But this, Potter, this is something bigger. We say emotionally naked, but it's always metaphorical. She's aiming to eliminate the metaphor. She's a genius, I'm beginning to believe.”
We reached the driveway.
“Have you slept with her yet?”
“I'm no longer divulging such details. Marianne and I are moving toward a sort of sanctity amongst ourselves. Where are you going?”
“Away” I said.
I climbed into the 4Runner and commenced a series of turns before merging into highway traffic. Once off the highway, I followed a UPS truck for a while, then a Cadillac that approached and executed turns with much deliberation.
The heart devoted elsewhere confers little attention to the world that surrounds it.
I was back in Oakville without any real sense of why I'd come, other than to suppose I must have wanted to. Once again children played in the yard at the corner of Yeager and Waldwick, the same