Slide - Kyle Beachy [52]
“Beautiful,” she said.
“My parents used to bring me every week. For a long time this slide was the single scariest thing in my life. The rest of the park I loved, but that main slide, so steep and final. Pure childhood mortification.”
“I can't believe I've never been here.”
We got out of the car and approached slowly, stepping heavily through fine, crayon-brown gravel. I felt my feet sink and drag as Zoe and I split from each other. I ducked through a short archway into the base of the main tower and climbed the lower rungs of a narrow ladder, cautious with my head and elbows. I was far too big, but I kept going. She went to the opposite end of the thing, away from the rocket portion of the slide. I heard echoes of her bouncing loudly across the bridge. I reached the top of the ladder and stared down the long, skinny, steel walkway, flanked by an enfilade of whitewashed chain-link. Just above was the biggest of the slides. Soon Zoe was crouched next to me.
“Each slide has its own character,” I said. “The really short one is more for ascent than anything, a ramp. The mid-level one off to the side of that ladder that just bruised the hell out of my knee is where kids begin. See the gentle bumps? Perfect for your novice slider. Once you mastered that one, you'd move up to this one here, which is really the focal point of this place.”
Next to us was the dark mouth of the curving, partially covered slide. Cicadas went skee-her, skee-her beneath or beside the sound of Zoe's little breath.
“I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to get the nerve to go down this thing. I had no problem with the medium one, which is actually steeper and faster than this one. I think it was the darkness that scared me. The tunnel curves around the pole so you have no idea where you're going once you're in. Jesus, it used to scare me.”
“There's definitely a metaphor there. Scared of the dark future.” She patted my elbow.
“You're not allowed to patronize me.”
“Oh no. I'm with you on the scariness thing. If the hot older neighbor is scared, I'm petrified.”
She looked at me, her eyes a blue like Stuart's lighted pool at midnight, then swung herself neatly into the tunnel. I followed close behind, but lost momentum before I reached the bottom. She laughed and made her way toward the swings while I squirmed down the last few feet of slide and followed.
Once she was seated on the swing, her smile turned immense.
“I love to swing. Love it.”
I nodded and took the swing next to her. The simple fact, though, was that I was a very bad swinger. I had never successfully worked out the physics of it, and this made me mad. It was gravity after all, and yet I was hopeless.
“In fact I can't think of a single thing to compete with the reckless joy of swinging,” she said, and suddenly it was as if she had entered a new plane of existence. Two quick steps and she was going like kitchen fire, soon eclipsing three and nine o'clock while I plodded slowly along like an old pet. Her chain slackened as she reached an apex, then stretched taut with downward acceleration.
“I don't understand how you're so much better than me.”
“You're trying too hard,” she said. “Or not enough.”
Her hair streamed behind, paused, then collapsed around her face. And again. I felt that semi-aquatic form of small astonishment that comes during the early stages of a new relationship, when every small lesson of a person's wonder turns the air between you more viscous. I hopped from the swing for a better view of the miraculous swinging angel, taking a seat in the gravel. The sweep and arc of her movement, the leaning, how her body's shifts worked in perfect concert with natural law— these her gifts to the world. She went on for quite some time before riding one upswing to its peak and leaving the swing behind, briefly flying, then landing back in the gravelly earth with its rules and constraints. She joined me in the gravel.
“How's the studying?” I asked.
“Words, words, words.