Slide - Kyle Beachy [9]
He was a sage. During the next couple hours we went from the table to the deck loungers to the couches inside the pool house. We spoke frequently enough that we never forgot we weren't alone. The television was situated along the far wall, next to the fireplace, and there were two couches, both coffee-brown leather with blankets neatly tossed over their backs, and one love seat. In the free space between the kitchen and the couches was a wooden dining table with four hand-carved chairs. Stuart's bedroom and the bath/changing room were in back. We watched the last half of a Cardinals victory over the Brewers, then went back outside.
The sage walked to the pool's edge and pointed at the water. “Vacuum is having the damnedest time figuring out that starfish.”
The insomnia became something I could almost rely on, but not quite. There was the odd night when I slept like a normal human. Usually, though, I'd end up trapping two or three hours of sleep, just enough that I made it through the following day without falling over. There was little point even going through the bedtime motions. I undressed. I went horizontal. I cannot describe the full extent of breathing exercises I employed. I went to the bathroom and masturbated my brains out. Nothing worked. Over and over again I gave up, convinced that the only way I was going to find sleep was by quitting the search. Of course, this was just trying, one step removed.
Several days passed without further word arriving from Audrey. Once or twice I sat in the new office and considered writing, but the lack of anything new to say combined with an image of her in some European Internet café—distracted, shrugging off whatever I managed to put into words, running out into Tuscan sun to explore the countryside by moped, laughing with Carmel about my feeble attempt to rectify, laughing always, Carmel laughing with those lips and teeth—made for a wicked deterrent. Also: the office looked out onto the garden, where my mother continued with a job I couldn't possibly believe required such abundant continuation.
I spent afternoons sitting at the pool while Stuart worked. Sometimes he paced; other times he buried his face in his palms. He made no mention of the apartment or Dutch elm disease, and I appreciated his continued stoicism. And at night, when cicadas screamed in Dolby Surround, he threw parties. Guests appeared out of darkness to stand around the pool, holding cans of Bud Light. Stuart had become friends with sets of employed couples who lived together with their dogs in two-bedroom houses they rented for less than any reasonable person would expect. I sat within the fruity nimbus of citronella and watched tight shirts stray up women's backs when they bent to test pool water. I saw ponytails threaded through openings in pink Cardinals caps. I saw fingernails painted a sort of nacreous anticolor, all shiny and white-tipped. I tried not to stare.
In the middle of it all, Edsel Denk was diving, and he was really fucking good at it. I watched him run from the basic to the complex, throwing his huge frame into gainers and inwards and front and back flips. Flips with half spins. Edsel was two years older than me, and this was the first I'd seen of him since I left for school. I remembered him as being so tall and so skinny it was hard to say which he was more. But tonight he looked bigger, wider, and the increased size made his presence