1

“Sometimes I feel like I’m crazy,” I tell Eddie, the owner and senior burgerman as I, the world’s richest minimum wage employee, slap that meat on the grill. The initial burst of grease which sizzles in explosive evaporation is loud enough to make Eddie pause before responding.

“Sometimez you feel like you’re crazy?” he repeats. “Yea. Sometimez I feel like that, too,” he agrees. “About you, that iz.” And then he laughs this kind of hacking laugh, a greasy laugh.

Such is the respect I’ve earned after one day on the job at Eddie’s Burger Nirvana, which is more like a purgatory (Eat the burger, feel the purge). In pre-Katrina New Orleans, it’s a typical New Orleans-style hamburger joint, dirty and dark--a tavern without the alcohol. The delicate remnants of flies sit on the dusty windowsills like small houses of cards, their ash-like fragility undisturbed by the generations who have eaten here. The indirect sunlight that makes its way past the overhanging aluminum porch and through filmy windows that have never been cleaned is the principal means of illumination. Several fluorescents flicker and buzz with impotence overhead; laziness is the only thing preventing replacement with new bulbs that I’m sure would last years. The counter is usual counter height and then some, a plexiglass strip hazed with sprinkled grease comes up an additional foot or so along its entire length. There’s music on the juke that is some sort of dreadful bluesy, country-and-western infidelity crap. It seems just as greasy as the air in the place, the type of music that would make any reasonable person ask, “Now who in the hell played that?” And all the patrons seem reasonable, so I blame Eddie, who, after all, owns the juke box. Over the counter I watch him shuckin’ and jivin’ to his selection. I can see him through that atomized grease that is both on the plexiglass as well as hanging unsettled in maiden flight above it.

I’m sure all of these people eat here every day, even though it’s on Tulane Avenue, a wide thin-laned thoroughfare of suspect proprietorships. Along this street are merchants who cater to the students from the medical schools, as well as to the patients who let them learn. It is a street where these victims and victors are both regarded as equals, because they each ring the same bells on the cash registers. The cash register at Eddie’s Burger Nirvana is off limits to me, as this is my first day. Eddie studies me with suspicion; after all, anyone who says he feels like he’s crazy shouldn’t have his fingers in the money. He keeps his eye on me.

Does this make me nervous? No. Do I really care at all? Not really. I certainly don’t need to impress Eddie. But I do need this job because I want to talk to someone. If I blow it, I get another simp job. In a while, that is. Is Eddie good to talk to? I really don’t care about that either. He doesn’t have to listen. And he doesn’t even have to talk back, except that when he does it’s hysterical, because he’s got this weird lisp that sounds like all of his Ss are Zs.

The reason I sometimes feel like I’m crazy is because I’ve always found it easy to slip-slide around. As a matter of fact, I’ve always found it easy to do all kinds of wonderful things with my body. Everything but leave it, that is.

“That’s not so easy,” I explain to Eddie. “I’d like to be able to pull that off without having a heart attack or something so dramatic.”

“Pleaze,” begs Eddie, “not here, anyway. You’ll have all theze sztudent doctorz hoppin’ on you and then hoppin’ the ticket, and there’ll go my cazsh flow.” And he hacks out another greasy laugh. He’s a wiry guy who’s probably only a little older than me, but whose world has made him look a lot older.

He’s kind of yellow all over. It’s hard to tell whether his color is a perennial layer of permagrease, one very large nicotine stain, or an illness which makes me wonder if anyone should really eat here. The medical students all look him over pretty good when they come in. Especially the Tulane ones, who seem a bit nerdier than the LSU medical students. The hair on his head sticks out from under his logo’d hat, the official Eddie’s Burger Nirvana hat that has the picture of a saint with a sizzling burger where the halo should be. Eddie’s hair is yellowish like the rest of him, so it’s hard to tell where his skin ends and his scalp begins along that continuum of waxen, sallow color that is his body, the final resting place of years of airborne grease droplets and exhaled nicotine.

“Number eight!” he shouts to the audience of carnivores seated at long wooden tables which always sport the latest editions of graffiti carved into them. (Are there that many people walking around here carrying knives?) The tightly scheduled lunch hour crowd is getting nervous, each of them at one time or another checking a watch for the feasibility of eating at all. Number eight is a relieved young woman who snatches her tray away to her table and begins eating before even settling into her seat.

“Keep your hat on, pleaze,” Eddie commands me, having caught me in the act of stuffing it into my back pocket.

“Come on, Eddie, what are you afraid of, the Board of Health?” I challenge him. There is applause from those waiting.

“Az long az you’re here,” he tells me, you’re in my world--and I zay keep the hat on. Bezidez, you look better with it on, especially if you pull it over your face.” He makes the adjustment for me by grabbing the visor portion of the cap and tugging downward. More applause, this time from the Eddie fans. I can smell the hair of the employee before me, which explains my expression when I free my face back up by positioning the cap properly.

“These guys are great!” comes out from somewhere in the crowd.

“I’m also working on the ability to have my whole life flash in front of my eyes without actually dying,” I continue in resumed soliloquy, finally having shaken off the smell of the cap.

“Oh, pleaze,” he says again, completely blowing me off. I guess this is appropriate, for as the owner of the Burger Nirvana who pays minimum wage, he’s seen and talked to all types.

“No, really, flash right there right in front of me, like a total read out--a spit out--of a computer.”

“YeaYouRight,” he says.

“So what if I’m organic,” I insist, “I should be able to do it, damn it!”

“YeaYouRight,” he says again, and then, “number ten!” he announces. “Come on down!” He laughs again.

“Hey Eddie, what hoppen’ to nummer nine?” asks a policeman, a large Hispanic New Orleans cop.

“Number nine, number nine,” Eddie mumbles as his eyes dart back and forth taking inventory of the patties on the grill. “Waz that the well done?” he asks back, as if meat there were actually cooked to order.

“It wasn’t a hamburger,” the officer says curtly from behind police sunglasses, “it’s a dog, and yea, I expect it should be done well.” Standing behind the counter Eddie’s eyes keep searching. They ultimately leave the grill and spot the cooked hot dog, still steaming, on the dirty floor. He reaches down to pick it up.

“Good thing it fell on the paper,” he says, feigning relief as he prepares it on the bun. He shoots me a wink.

“Yep,” I say to Eddie, “that was well done, alright.”

“Here,” he offers the policeman, who is standing in front of number ten. I check the floors for more: all clear. Eddie wipes something off of his forearm by sliding it across his dirty apron and then looks up for the source. His eyes, which almost seem yellow themselves, finally rest upon me as the culprit. My gaping mouth indicts me, cocked suspiciously as it is, in the apex of a full yawn.

“If you feel a little warm sprinkle of moisture from God knows where, that’s probably me discharging the duct of my salivary gland.”

“Jezuz Gawd!” he shouts.

“Yes, really,” I boast proudly, “I can do that!” Eddie doesn’t seem pleased with my talent. He rubs his forearm even more vigorously against his apron, darkening the job-related color on his skin even more. “Eddie, I can do all kinds of things. I can, for instance, blow air up my nasolacrimal tubes to puff up my eyelids like a frog.

“Now don’t do that,” he requests nervously in front of all of these people. I do it anyway.

“It’s great for scaring the hell out of little kids,” I announce, snapping around to present to him Man-frog.

“Oh I bet,” Eddie answers, grossed out and turning back to his sizzling burgers. I hand number eleven his meal, my eyelids still inflated, but leaking somewhat as they open a bit so that I can see.

“That’s a great frog,” the male medical student who is number eleven says to me. He leans over the counter to stare, his white coat loaded and heavy, decorated with all kinds of doctor things--stethoscope, little rubber hammers, and that rubber tubing which particularly frightens me.

“Isn’t it great, really? That’s what I’m trying to convince this guy of,” I tell the future doctor who is number eleven. “I can do all kinds of things with my body. Do you know I make over ninety different mouth noises.”

“So what’s, say, number sixty-three?” he asks me, lingering with his tray.”

“Aw, no,” Eddies demands, getting a little aggravated.

“Come on Eddie, this guy’s great.”

“How did you know my name, fella?” Eddie’s about ready for number eleven to take a seat.

“This is Eddie’s Burger Nirvana, right? I’ve got to figure you’re not Nirvana.” And with that he returns to his table to eat.

“No, that’s me,” I joke, bringing Eddie back to his famous laugh. “You’ve got to have control of your body,” I continue, “to do all of these things--real easy--just relax and assume control. Relax and assume--that’s the key. If you try to take control, forget it. You’ll hardly be able to crack every knuckle or any other joint--like I can, by the way--including my neck, back, and hips. Like to hear it?”

“Zertainly not,” Eddie answers me. I plant my feet firmly on the floor and slowly tilt to let out a rapid fire cracking sound from my spine. A small group applauds at the medical students’ table in front. Eddie looks at them with disapproval.

All of this introduction is wasted on Eddie the owner and senior burgerman. It’s not till around closing time when things are settled down and it’s just he and I cleaning up that I can tell him about the real story of assuming control, raising my tale from the crude and rude of manipulated bodily fluids and orificial sound effects to that of the ultimate relaxing and assuming control: sliding.

As thrilled as I’ve always been with myself about this talent, I’ve nevertheless tried to be very careful about sliding lately because of a particular mishap, a certain misfortune, that begins my story. You see, I’ve been sliding almost daily in my life, avoiding even the most trivial untoward development in my day to day existence.

“Zo just where in the hell do ya zlide to?” Eddie asks. We’re each using a giant wet cloth, each starting at either end of the condiment counter, the plan to meet in the middle with everything clean.

“I really don’t know,” I answer. “Maybe I slide to other dimensions. Maybe I have the ability to unify those four aggravating universal forces, way ahead of all of those egg-heads.”

“Huh?”

“Yea,” I say out loud to myself, “maybe gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism all come together in me! What an honor! What a push!” Eddie has stopped wiping, now just looking at me in all of my excitement. I now focus on him and hold out my arms as if this were so elementary: “What a sliiiide.”

“What an azzhole,” he adds, continuing his wiping up. This may be true, I concede privately. For anyone who can slide like me will undoubtedly do it for gain. I struggle with the philosophical question that if all assholes are selfish, does it necessarily follow that all selfish people are assholes? I make everyday choices, like everyone does, and based on these choices my future is changed. But unlike everyone else, if I don’t like the future that a choice has determined, I can slide and find myself in a world where the effects of my choice are different. And I know that’s selfish, because I land where everyone and everything else is just a little altered. But, really, isn’t it true that what they don’t know won’t hurt them? Especially if they have no knowledge of what might have been? Why should I have to be the one to suffer with the knowledge of what might have been? I can be in what might have been before it’s too late. It’s never too late for me.

“Maybe I go into science-fiction time warps, Eddie.”

“Maybe you do, Ebe, maybe you really do.” He rolls his eyes with his comment.

“If so, though, it’s only a few seconds this way or that. Kind of like deja vu for an instant before the feeling pops and here I am, all caught up, in a place slightly different. Who knows where I slide to? And who cares?”

“Not me.”

“As long as it successfully takes me to that different place which is slightly different enough for me.”

To my advantage, of course. Which is why I’m a lazy-ass worth 2.54 mill’ at age twenty-two. Ha! Five figures for every orifice sound effect I can make. And I do know how to spend it, that’s for sure. I do take life fairly easy. Don’t get me wrong--I’ve seen the value in education and worked for my degree and all that. But I’ve also never seen the harm in self-indulgence. After all, I did have the most lavish and popular dorm room in school. And that felt good, I don’t mind admitting. I know I’m selfish. I just don’t see the harm.

Alright, I know that selfishness is a stage we all go through; and alright, I know that true maturity means getting past that stage; and yes, some people don’t get past that stage because some people can’t. But there are people who choose not to get past it--people who know better and won’t because they don’t have to.

Like me. I do know better, and I also know it’s better for me not to put anyone before me. Love? That does make me re-think this at times. For I’m told that love implicitly defines your self-assigned status as second. Or if you have a child, third--Oh God! My greed node is throbbing at the thought. I make myself think about baseball when maturing thoughts like these try to lead me into decent temptations. Not that I’m a bad guy. I’m really not. I haven’t hurt anyone, on purpose, that I know of. I just haven’t put anything back into the world, that’s all. One day perhaps I will, if I can see any real important reason to. But I’m young. I’ve got a lot of time to mature if and when the time comes, or when the right world comes. Or if the right love comes. In the meantime, if the dice come up snake eyes, I slide the few times until I see my number. And if the winning raffle ticket isn’t mine, I slide thousands of times until I’m in the world where I’m the one collecting.

So if I’m so stinking rich, how come I applied for work in the Burger Nirvana? Because I don’t just want to talk to someone, I need to talk to someone. And talk I do, to which Eddie can testify. I like to get a job simple enough so that I can do the work while concentrating on my conversation. I’ve done a bunch of little jobs--jobs that always deal with the public. They never last long, but I get to talk to someone, anyone, from time to time. This is the way I dip-stick my sanity. If I ever were to stop sliding and stay put, I could really get to know people, and I wouldn’t have to satisfy this need by circuitous employment schemes. But then, since I wouldn’t be sliding, I wouldn’t have to talk about it, either. I guess it’s a lonely honor I have, being able to slide.

And the simpler the job, the safer it is to blab away about this, for people like Eddie don’t care if I seem deluded. I’m affluent, thanks to sliding, and I can turn in a resignation when I get bored with these types of adventures, or if the work turns out to be hard at all. I couldn’t tell any of this to people like my bankers, though. If they were to hear me go on about sliding, I’d be labeled crazy, and the next thing to happen would be some financial advisor of mine would find a way to finagle my money away from me.

So what is this sliding business? A transition to a slightly different reality, that’s what. And apparently for my sole benefit. That’s at least what I try to get Eddie to grasp. When I do what I call sliding there are slight, subtle alterations in the world around me: the color of a chair, the spelling of a brand name, the extra point on the score that helps me beat the spread.

“And let’s not forget that conversion of a fifth card that gives me my royal flush,” I further clarify to him as he empties the cash register with the sounds of clicks, drawers, and bells. “It’s interesting, it’s fun, it’s profitable. Yes, Eddie, when you add a math degree plus a love for gambling plus my talent, you always come up with the right answer. Because if the random changes don’t suit me, I just slide again. No problem.”

“I really don’t follow you, Ebe,” he admits, still going through his little list of tasks to close down for the evening.

“It’s just this thing about me that I can do. I just relax; I just assume. Then I slide. And when I do, I’m in a different world, changed ever so slightly.”

“You mean that I might change?” he asks.

“Yes!”

“Do I feel thiz, and if I do, am I az crazy az you?” His laugh is a little more tired now. I ignore his editorial comment and answer him.

“You can’t notice, because you’re a different person. I mean you’re still an Eddie-type guy, but your name may be slightly different. Like you might be Freddy.”

“I don’t think zo,” he declares.

“And you might own an ice cream store instead. As a matter of fact,” I reflect, “I think I might have worked for you for about a week when you were Freddy and you did own an ice cream store. I don’t know, I’ve done this so many times, and so briefly each time, that it’s hard to remember everything. Anyway, in a different world you might drive a different car, you might not smoke--”

“Haven’t had one in almozt two hourz.”

“--And you might not be so yellow.”

“I’m not yellow!” he shouts at me, offended at my remark. “It’z theze lightz. They’re fluorezzent. They may look white but they zshine yellowizsh to keep out the bugz.” His Z’s are now more spread out, making me think he’s always about to sneeze. “Zee! You’re pretty yellow, too, under theze lightz,” he goes on in further defense.

“Not as yellow as you, Eddie.”

“Yea, well, that’z becauze you’re a...” he pauses. “Hey, what are you--a wop? a spic? kraut?--what?”

(I do not know.)

“Alright, Eddie, calm down. All I know is I slide to a slightly different world. A different you, but the same me. It’s like there are countless worlds that I can move along, each world unaware of the others. They’re all lined up like layers that I travel along and through. They all exist at the same time. I myself don’t change, but I take advantage of the changes that I come to. I can do this whenever I want. I don’t have any control as to what type of world I go to, though; it’s just a little randomly different.”

Actually, in my private reflections I’ve come to realize that what I do is engage in a willful act of passivity, even if that doesn’t make much sense. It’s an active firing of those parts of my brain that lazily surround and thereby obtund the primitive amphibian parts.

“Maybe I have an extra gland or something--I don’t know,” I tell him, not wanting to complicate my explanation. Eddie sniffs the air in mock search for something malodorous from an extra gland. This time I laugh.

What I do know is that I am keenly aware of all of the separately working parts of my brain. I can perceive all of their job descriptions as they are at work. I don’t just have my mind steering around my body as this vague consortium of shared and crossed-over responsibilities affecting the whole. I feel the different parts. They are segregated. I mean they still all work together to get my body from one self-serving place to another; my ice cream cone doesn’t hit me in my forehead instead of my mouth or anything like that. But I can perceive the different parts’ separate contributions.

“It’s kind of like understanding how government really works,” I go on as we now tackle the floor with mops from opposite corners.

“Reg’lar gov’ment...or Louisiana gov’ment,” he wants to know.

“No, real government,” I clarify. “Like understanding how the federal government really works. You know, understanding it with the separated branches and further subdivisions, instead of just sitting around like a big stupe waiting for the tax refund to come in.” I guess that’s a bad example I give Eddie, because all I do the majority of my time is play around and wait for the dividends to come in. And I don’t even pay taxes.

“I am different,” I conclude to him, “in that I can distinguish the separate workings of all of the parts of my brain while they’re all working. I don’t just let my mind meander through life with that simple singular momentum, that unity of purpose that’s as dull-witted as some anvil. When I push this mop--”

“Which you can keep doing any time you want,” he interjects.

“When I move it around on the floor, I’m not just pushing a pole around,” I say excitedly. “I’m feeling the left side of my brain firing off the messages to my right arm’s muscles and the right side of my brain firing off to my left arm’s countering action. I’m feeling the returning sparks to the back of my head where I can really enjoy the coordination fizzling around up there from all of this. I’m aroused by the cross-over traffic of impulses that tie it all together. You have no idea how thrilling even so simple an act as mopping--”

“Ztop,” he says, holding up his hand, “before you go and have a wet dream about it.”

“When my brain thinks,” I tell him, catching my breath, “I can hear stereo--I hear all of the instruments and where they’re coming from. Put simply, your brain’s monophonic.”

“You put that zimply?” he asks, surprised.

“Like I said, maybe I have an extra gland or something.” He pauses in his duty, leaning against the mop handle.

“Ebe--you underzstand your brain so well and all, all of the different partz--do we add that to all of your other talentz?”

“Like sliding?” I ask, still pushing my mop.

“Yea.”

“It’s not a different talent. It’s what makes sliding possible.”

“Oh,” he says as he starts pushing his mop again, even though I know he is choosing not to even try to understand.

And I’ve long known that it is important to appreciate how I can sense all of the different workings of my brain if I want to understand sliding. For there is one area of my brain I just can’t seem to connect to, to feel, and I point this out to my temporary boss. That mysterious area is that ancient primitive patch of gray matter around which evolution has wrapped convolutions so as to laugh at the amphibian. It is the deepest part of the mind, the first stuff that the modern brain covered up so that we could finally crawl out of the sludge and leave the reptilian thoughts behind. That mysterious area that I can’t taste is padlocked. We are all separated from those first thoughts that are locked inside of us all. I figure it would be pretty neat stuff to relate to that part, to finally feel my whole brain, my whole existence. But all I can do is sense it in sort of a dull, distant way, like hearing dangerous gales--some sort of ill wind--safely behind a locked door. I pity Eddie, because this is the only monophonic part of my brain, so I can imagine how his whole head must feel all of the time.

I guess those original thoughts are imprisoned for good reason, because even I, the guy who can do so many wonderful things with his body, can’t touch them. Original thoughts must be original sin, for there is anatomy, with that passive barrier--the locked door--that forbids penetration, holding them as fast in my brain as mental Velcro. That passive cerebral area is by its very position a physical buffer for those ancient, savage drives--drives successfully submerged in the cold-hearted, senseless, and Godless realms where they belong. And just as I can perceive all of the separate workings of my brain, I also sense this protection, this locked door. In fact--and I think this may be the actual thing that sliding is all about--I have somehow learned to turbo this buffer, to super-charge this passive area. I go on explaining to Eddie; I’m not quitting with him now.

“Just as a 700 pound man can crush you by passively sitting on you, so also he can render you two-dimensional by actively jumping up and down on your already crushed body. And no amount of reptilian hate and desire for vengeance will help you flip him over your very flattened shoulder.” Eddie’s lost.

I explain to him that feeling the presence of that passive buffer that so adequately (“Like my 700 pound man,” I repeat) and so completely buffers those hateful, antediluvian areas--those scaly areas which had originated before reason, before sense, or before God--makes me different.

“Everyone else just takes this cushion, like the rest of the brain, for granted,” I inform him.

“I know I do,” he indicates with a tone that implies he’s quite comfortable not noticing the important job this area of his brain is doing, not noticing his own civilization.

“Not me,” I fire back. “I can really feel it there, working hard in its passive role, just like the huffin’ and puffin’ of a sedentary whale of a man.” I pause to mull this over. “I just can’t feel what’s under that fat man. And believe me I’ve tried.”

“I really do believe you, Ebe,” he says with a chuckle as we tackle the day’s debris on the grill.

“No, I mean I’ve really tried. And I continue to do so. I’ve always worked on out-of-body experiences to try.”

“You don’t zay.”

“And I’ve done meditation to try.”

“No zshit--I’m really fazzinated.”

“I’ve plugged away at it for the longest time. But meditation’s not the answer.”

“Get on a tranzit buz, Ebe, if ya wanna zee the animal in uz all,” he blurts, laughter converting to a coughing attack.

“I don’t know, Eddie. I just can’t reach the amphibian.”

“If you do, do zomething for me, will ya?” he sputters, trying to harness his throat.

“Sure, Eddie, like what?” I ask.

“Would you zap the fliez in here with your tongue?” he says. This is his punch line just as the coughing is receding from his previous remark. He laughs at his own joke, resurrecting his smoker’s revenge.

“One way not to reach this savage area, Eddie, is to slide, for that seems to put it in its place even more solidly.”

“I’m zure it doez, Ebe.”

“Don’t you see? Like when I said I can turbo-charge that passive buffer. The one thing I can do is make the fat man get up. I can make him jump up and down on that reptile that is in us all. And this isn’t making my modern brain’s shield engage in an active enterprise; it’s actually firing up the passivity of the barrier to a higher level of suppression, which move me farther away from the primitive thinking in us all. It makes my brain even more snooty in its regard for the uncivilized areas.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Eddie, that’s the trick! That’s the perspective I uniquely attain. It’s all perspective, after all. And that’s when things change. I slide when I do this, when I relax and assume control over this part of my mind in a way that no one else can. And then of course things are different! I’ve repressed the worst of humanity even more. I’ve increased my distance. Perspective! Of course the world seems a little different to me. It is different after I do this. And I don’t complain.” We’re finished with the grill at this point, and we both straighten up from hunched attention to our scraping and look at each other. I lower my voice for effect. “I know,” I whisper, “that if I can ever brush that fat man aside, get to that primeval sensorium, really feel it and meet the reptile in us all, then I know that’s when I’ll finally know the real me, the total me, the me in total perspective. Until that time, however,” I say with an arriving smile, “I can still enjoy myself. And if I’m not enjoying myself...”

“Poof,” Eddie jumps in, “you’re in a different plaze. Zslightly, right?”

“Yes,” I answer, “and my bookie pays.”

“Maybe you have theze spezial brain wavez or zomething,” he offers politely, obviously having heard something somewhere about this.

“Alpha waves.”

“Yea, thoze,” again politely. He raises an eyebrow. “Are you zsure you’re not getting closer to your reptile instead of puzhing it away?”

“That’s ridiculous, Eddie. The world gets better—for me, that is—not worse. This ability is evolution, not devolution.”

“Whatever that means,” he says.

“Well,” I respond to his politeness, “if all that’s not as clear an explanation as you would want, that’s as close as you’re going to get. For I’m not quite sure how much clearer I am on this. I know I relax; I know I assume. And then I know that it happens and I do it to get richer.” I’m on Eddie’s tail his whole way to the front of his shop where he is locking up. The traffic on Tulane Avenue is already funneling in from the business district.

“Ebe.”

“Yes?”

“Relax and azzume and get richer, right?”

“Eddie, I didn’t know you were interested.”

“Yea, well how about relaxing tomorrow and azzuming you don’t work here anymore. And I hope you do get richer when you do it.” He isn’t angry or anything, but tired; he’s just been talked to, to death. I can appreciate that; after all, I only did it for me. I’m really not trying to start another religion or cult with deep frying disciples.

I accept his offer and shake hands wearing a smile.

“Nothing perzonal, Ebe?”

“Sure,” I answer sincerely. He hesitates before he lets go of my hand. He’s a good guy.

“Look, why don’t you juzt work zort of every few dayz or fill in every now and then.” I reaffirm the handshake, approving. “Good,” he says. Happier now, he snaps around and begins walking away from his business and his ex-employee, fat and grease sensors--if they were to exist--certainly going off, as I would imagine them, right and left along his route.

The walk back to my apartment building gets ritzier and ritzier as I travel along, making my grease-spattered attire less appropriate as I make my way there. I live in a fancy-schmancy condo near Riverwalk. Normally I’d call a cab to my swank residence, but I prefer to walk. This is unusual for me, because I’m usually so slothful. But I’m on a “sliding” introspection roll and don’t mind the extra time for thinking on my way back.

I think about slipping, which is when sliding happens accidentally. I suppose there are some moods I can be in when I accidentally slip. I would be in a reverie, for instance, and then I’d do something very physiologic like, say, sneezing. And when those little white flashy lights in my vision would die out, I’d notice that my slacks were a different cut. But I’ve gotten much better at preventing that sort of thing, and nowadays the slides are almost always volitional.

I’ve always slid; I must have even been doing it as a baby. I imagine I’ve been through thousands of worlds by now--passed through countless layers of reality all stacked up. Carelessly, thoughtlessly, and selfishly. (I remember at one time becoming unreasonably terrified when I had supposed that the opposite might be happening: that I might not be sliding unchanged into a slightly different world around me at all, but that I might be changing ever so slightly in a world that was stable. But then I figured, what’s the difference? The panic ceased.)

I’ve often tried to recall the very first slide in my memory. There are a lot of silly times when as a kid I’d do something like slide to change the flavor of a Life Saver when the very next one in the pack would be like the one in my mouth in my new world, and then at supper I’d hear my dad complain about that damn Democrat in the White House instead of that damn Republican from the night before.

Most of my childhood was like that, slides as trivial occurrences: paying rent on Baltic Avenue instead of on Boardwalk; catching that fly ball in front of the guys instead of having it fall right through my hands; having that bottle stop spinning to point at me and Judy Mullen instead of at me and flatty Patty Dalton. But in searching my memory, I do remember the first significant time I slid.

I must have been about six or seven, before Monopoly, little leagues, and spin the bottle. I was out in my back yard pretending I was getting shot and killed when I took a fall that was part of the routine. Unfortunately, I tore up my right knee with a broken beer bottle that lay hidden in the grass. There was blood everywhere. My dad came rushing out when he heard the screaming. Mom was waddling right behind him. It must have been on a Saturday or Sunday, because they were both home. Dad sent my mom back into the house to get a dish towel to wrap my knee tightly. She was back in no time, and my dad helped me up after applying it to the place that was bleeding. I remember he picked up the broken beer bottle. He hated alcoholic drinks in every possible way, and he showed his disgust when he slammed the jagged bottle into a wheelbarrow where he had been throwing the weeds from his gardening.

“Now how did a beer bottle get into our back yard?” he asked. He looked at the high wooden fence that faced the street and figured it out. “Damn kids!” he said angrily, and wouldn’t you know it, another bottle came humming over the fence. Dad went crazy, bulleting to the fence and hopping to see over it, to catch a license plate. It was a pretty funny scene now that I look back on it, but I was too busy crying to see any humor in it back then. So I slid.

I remember falling on my rear end hard, my legs no longer able to support me.

“Hurry up,” my dad called out to my mom. “Here, help me get him up--I think it’s broken.”

He was right. Usually my slides benefitted me, but this one turned a simple laceration into a simple fracture. The difference in pain was my first memorable lesson in sliding: It can always be worse! That’s why, even at that young age, I knew not to slide again. I dared not slide again. I’d take my medicine with the situation as it was.

We drove down to a hospital, and all I could remember was how badly it hurt. I don’t remember which hospital, except that it must have been one of the big ones, because after the Emergency Room doctor had finished with the tetanus shot and leg cast we had to go up several floors for some reason. There had been some talk about establishing me with a pediatrician in the Pediatrics Clinic. I remember my father complaining about this to my mother, protesting about how much this had cost already. And then when they realized we had taken the wrong elevator, he really went wild. We had followed someone’s advice and taken the elevator in the wrong wing of the building. Instead of going up the tower that held the clinics, we were stopping at each floor of the hospital itself. I can remember the doors opening to a nurses’ station each time, with the resultant curious stares from whomever was stationed there wondering why we weren’t getting off. Apparently some wise guy had punched all of the buttons when we entered on the second floor, and we had no choice but to take the scenic tour of every floor before we would be able to go back down. My dad’s mood was contagious, and my mother began puffing in exasperation each time the doors began to open.

But then the doors opened to the floor that has this whole episode so ingrained in my memory. It was immediately apparent that this was the pediatrics floor of the hospital, because all of the walls of the nurses’ station had cartoon animals frolicking with no regard to the seriousness of the diseases there. I remember a lot of wailing out, both a man’s and a woman’s voice. Suddenly, they appeared out of nowhere, catching up with the bawling we were hearing. Looking back, I guess they were fairly young, although at the time I lumped them into the “grown-up” category. The grief that emanated forth was powerful enough to make us retreat backwards into the elevator car as they stumbled in. The anguished sirens they made were as eerie as the visceral howl from a bedeviled dog. There were no words spoken, just the horrifying sounds of their other-worldly torments and my parents’ wide-eyed yielding. Words were unnecessary. I instinctively knew their child had just died.

We were invisible to them in their unearthly despair, and they fell back against the side of the elevator wall, slithering down. It couldn’t get any worse than this, I remember thinking in a panic. It was my first introduction to real death, and the loss to these people made trivial any mere cessation of breathing or sentience. It was also my first introduction to real hate, for these two hated what had happened, and when the screaming continued, so did I. I began to shake. My throat tightened to the point that I began wheezing. I felt my heart pounding wildly. The elevator became so claustrophobic. My mother and father were affected, too. My mother raised a nervous arm to reach out to either one of them, but her intention faltered because of the very weight of the horror. She withdrew her hand, knowing that nothing, nothing at all, ever, could stop this pain. When she recoiled away, my father put his own arm around her as if to protect her from their suffering; but when he did, when my mother was secure in his embrace, they both began sobbing, too, seeing what happens to people after the most feared nightmare comes true. In the small confines of the closed elevator the young couple’s laments were shattering. Their outburst was a railing out against hopelessness. Deafening, it was the only reaction possible to the worst thing that could ever possibly happen.

I slid.

My cast was suddenly gone, replaced only by some bandages over a lesser laceration; but the couple’s shrieks continued. I slid again. The numbers of the elevator only went up to twelve instead of fifteen. Then nine instead of twelve. The man and woman were still uncontrollably bereaved. My mother made another attempt to offer solace, but she was such a mess by that time that her gesture was pathetic. I made more slides. Clothing changed, the linoleum of the elevator floor changed, and my bandages changed. But death still hung unchanged in the air. The sobs were pacemaking my heart and I became desperate. I was too young to realize that sliding to another world, another layer of all of total existence, where their child was alive, merely meant that I went to that world, insinuating myself in a cast of all new characters. This couple and their loss would remain behind with their sorrows. I would be the lucky one, not them. I would be the one to escape their distress, not them. I would be presented with the new parents, so lucky in their own ignorance; lucky in a world wherein they brought their child to the doctor maybe a day earlier, or held his hand that time crossing the street, or warned her not to play with matches. I would replace whatever pop-up interchangeable phantom was in my place before I went there. And another such creature would replace the vacuum I left when I went off searching for the parents of a child who squeaked by.

The elevator fell silent. There were hopeful smiles on the couple who were now holding hands in their union rather than bouncing off of the elevator walls in their outrage. There was still plenty of concern, but here now was optimism. They knew there would be a recovery. And when the elevator door opened to the floor they wanted, it was like a tomb had opened again--like someone had risen from the dead. The opening doors gave birth to the joy of good expectations. I was too young to think anything other than I had done a God-like thing for them. And that felt good. Now I know better. Now I know I did it for me and not for them. But it still feels good now, anyway.

This whole episode, my earliest profound memory of a slide, has always been a mixed-bag memory for me, because although I still have warm feelings about the illusion of giving those parents back their child, there is still some awareness of loss for me. I could have sworn my mother was pregnant before we went to the hospital. I can’t really remember clearly, but I surely thought I remember her belly bigger before and flat after. That’s the troubling gap in my memory about this first important slide that I recall. I surely hope it wasn’t the case, like the Lord takes a life to give a life. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Or did I taketh away?

I guess it really doesn’t matter. Bad things could still be happening in New Orleans while someone eats pasta in Rome. Bad things could still be happening in a New Orleans I left behind while I eat a burger at Eddie’s in a New Orleans I slide to. The difference between that someone in Rome and me at Eddie’s is I have the perspective because of the extra distance I can put between the reptile and the rest of my civilized mind. I’m not handicapped like everyone else who tries in vain to focus without being able to distance themselves like I can, the resulting blur blinding them into a linear track of one reality till they die. And just as events in both New Orleans and Rome are self-contained on the same planet, so all differing circumstances are gathered together in the multi-layered collection of realities I get to travel through. If the Lord taketh away in one layer, the other layers make it O.K. That guy in Rome may be a trans-Atlantic traveler, but I’m a trans-totality tourist taking in the sights. And in this capacity I have slid through thousands of layers during my young lifetime so far.

These thousands of layers have ultimately brought me to the layer which now begins my tale. Maybe next time I drop in Eddie will want to hear it, because it does involve a girl, and he does seem the type to be interested in girl stories. Maybe not.

I’ve been in this layer almost a month, probably longer than I’ve ever stopped before. This is because the previous time something happened that really scared me. It used to be that in sliding to another layer the difference around me would be subtle and fairly random. Like if I were waiting for a bus, regardless of Eddie’s advice, I’d slide into a world where the schedule read the next bus was in two minutes and not twenty. I mean, I’d slide just to save eighteen minutes. I’d go through maybe ten or fifteen layers really fast, watching the schedule disintegrate and reappear with the changing times flashing until--whaddayaknow--here was the bus. At the same time, the wall the schedule was on would flip from green to red to brown and so on. (Once I did this for almost twenty minutes before the schedule suited me, and if I had just stuck with the original, I would have only had to wait ten minutes. That was before I got rich. Now I take taxis.)

Lately, though, I’ve noticed that the changes actually seemed to be related from layer to layer. The wall, for instance, would get uglier each layer, meaning that I wasn’t just sliding into a random-version world but a next world. This meant direction. This realization was a little frightening but really didn’t stop me. After all, there was money to be made waiting for the right universe.

For instance, one layer I spent a weekend at a craps table in Las Vegas with bets on the line, sliding over and over to watch the just-landed dice ultimately switch to a pay-off. My bets lay on the table unchanged: I guess I was the constant.

“You see, Ana, I’m the constant. The world changes around me,” I told her last layer, which is where I should have stayed. I was so stupid.

She was a wonderful girl, the type I knew would be eternally youthful, animated with untouchable impish sexuality that created the type of a tantalizing desire that would ultimately excite me into rash acts. She probably qualified as my first real girlfriend. It seems kind of weird to say anything is real to me, I guess, the way I pass on when something is the slightest bit irritating or uncomfortable. But she was very real. We met and hit it off beautifully. But my way of life punished me when I treated her like just another one of my replaceable gambles.

“You see, Ana, I’m the constant. The world changes around me...” And then I slid to see if Ana would be slightly altered enough to want to go to bed with me. She altered alright--right out the door, someone not all that much in love with me back. So that’s why I’ve been stuck in this layer for so long, which has bored me out of my mind enough to get another stupid job just to talk someone’s ears off. I stay in this layer because I want to try to win her back naturally. Imagine that! I’m afraid if I were to slide again, things would get even worse, and she may be someone who couldn’t even give a hoot about me. And right now, I figure I have at least a hoot.

Ana and I met on a beach in Pensacola, Florida, one afternoon in early June. I was lying on my blanket which was actually a large beach towel. I had my ice chest on my right and my boombox on my left. Both of these were heavy metal affairs that proved I had been doing this a long time--long before the convenience of plastic and styrofoam had entered beach fashion. With me right in the middle, this was, of course, the Holy Trinity of sun worship that had given me all of the sanctifying grace I’d ever need. My skin was collecting ultraviolet while my money market collected interest.

Even though the summer was young, it was already pretty hot there on the Gulf coast that day. The beach was its usual beautiful strip of sand--the rolled-out white carpet for the rehearsed bodies which now played their ambulatory parts so well in slight fabric and lotions. The same salty wind struck both my ears at once, the rush losing for me any sense of auditory proprioception. This made the world monophonic. My boombox was stereo, but of course this was wasted on me here on the beach, because whatever song leaked through the pulsed blowing wind buzzed only as a tinny rhythm in the background.

Even though my sunglasses were purported to be filters, they were nevertheless feeble shields against the nuclear fusion which shined so powerfully that day from above. The resulting glare overexposed my view which I surrounded in a squinty frame of fissured eyelids. The sunglasses were the type that lets you spy on people without them being able to see your eyes, so if I’d slide and gawk at the differences, no one could tell, assuming my sunglasses were a constant, too. You have to remember, life and sliding were still great at this point. This was before anything had been seen as deteriorating to any great extent. I was just enjoying lying around with my blunted sense organs, basking, watching the girls and guys go by. Mainly the girls, though.

The guys I’d kind of look at with scorn, because of this considerable talent of mine that no one else had. Being able to travel from world to world, merely at will, leaving the rest behind to be replaced by others, gave me this feeling of superiority that made me look at the guys that way. The girls escaped my pompous contempt, because, after all, they were girls, and girls were great!

Of course, I know I wasn’t regarded much by the guys. I was a just-about-ideal-body-weight sort of person, wearing last year’s Sears style in bathing suit. It wasn’t that I was cheap. Hell, no, I’ve always chosen first class. It’s just that I had no taste, except for all of my great wads of money, which usually was as much of a fashion statement as I needed to make.

But I hoped that the girls would regard me, because I really wasn’t bad looking. Even in last year’s swimwear. And even though my great green wads were not obvious in this setting, I fancied myself as emanating a certain presence that having a lot of money makes one imagine.

Then I saw this one girl who was almost fabulous. She approached from my left and followed in the train of beach traffic that was passing in review. I say almost fabulous, because although she was perfect right there and then, I saw by her bone structure that everything was the slightest bit wrong. She seemed to have some of those big-boned Mediterranean genes that were hard to identify readily in her because, after all, she was a sweet young thing; but you knew when it was time for babies she was going to spread and be stocky.

At times, when feeling out of character, fantasizing dangerously decent thoughts, I’ve toyed with the idea of settling down with the family kind; and that body was made for reproduction. As a matter of fact, I envisioned the pleasure of reproducing with her without delay. And her body, almost fabulous with genetic warning signals for the future--well, that’s what they made sliding for.

As I eyed her approaching, I slid dozens of times to hone her shape. She didn’t need much, you understand, but I got things just about perfect in my hedonistic, chauvinistic sort of way, being the type of guy that I am. And of course that wasn’t good enough. I kept going until I realized Miss Perfect Body was slipping away, like seeing the perfect focus of a single lens reflex camera come and go as you rack in and out. In the end I finally stopped when she had gotten back to almost fabulous.

She had come very close to me by this time with her skimpy white bikini that was in enticing opposition to her darkened body which listed back and forth in that just-so sauntering way that the beach tugged at her hips to do. She was simply beautiful. She had dark blonde hair, eyes of some color other than brown (I really couldn’t tell with my shades on), and a good figure on a sturdy, strong body. Her face contrasted with the solidity of her frame like a beacon of innocence. She wore this sad little smile that almost made me love her on sight. I found myself suddenly desperate for any type of an introduction. I removed my sunglasses.

Green. Her eyes were deeply green. They were these playful smiley-type eyes that gave her face an inviting appearance. I found this helpful as I worked up my nerve.

“Excuse me, got a light?” I asked her as she neared me, almost too late. It was a forced question and it was awkward coming out, as if I were asking her for information that was really none of my damn business.

“Sorry,” she responded, “I don’t smoke.” It wasn’t a bothered, casting off-type response, but she still did little more than glance.

“That’s O.K.,” I said, “I don’t smoke either.” She then looked at me, obviously puzzled. She was still walking, but slowing to give some slack for this to play out.

“Then why do you need a light?” she asked. Her confusion distracted her from her escape with the pedestrian movement. She stopped just off to my right side, facing me, eclipsing the afternoon sun so that beams of sunshine seemed to radiate from her. It was a majestic effect, and her companions were underworld shadows compared to this starlight being that chose to accept my existence. They moved on, the monophonic wind and glaring brightness camouflaging their friend’s abduction.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I apologized, “did I say ‘light?’ I meant ‘fight.’ Do you ever fight?”

“Me?” she asked, with a little smile indicating readiness to play along. She apparently noticed the moving twilight she was able to control over my body and purposefully positioned herself to render me blinded in her rays. “No, I never fight,” she declared.

“Good,” I said, putting my sunglasses back on. “Then I’d like to meet you. Rudolph. Rudolph Eber.” I lifted myself to a sitting position and stuck out my sandy hand for a shake, but I held it such that I shadowed my own face so that I could see hers clearly. She considered the offer, but hesitated, feigning caution.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Not so fast. What about you? Do you fight?”

“No, never,” I said hurriedly. “I’m a pussycat.” I withdrew my hand, not in resignation, but so as to use it to pivot myself into a more comfortable posture on my towel. Now more relaxed, I cajoled her. “I’m easy as hell to get along with. Go ahead, do something irritating. Better yet, just haul off and hit me. I bet I won’t even get mad.” She started to laugh. “C’mon, go ahead,” I insisted teasingly. “It’ll prove it.”

She drew her hand back just like a girl would. I swear, she was so cute, all poised to playfully hit me with one of those little lady slaps.

Bam!

She got me good! I hadn’t felt a slap like that since the first grade when Sister Ann let me have it for talking in line and I slid over and over until she was a “Man oh man!” I shouted, clutching my face. My sunglasses were a heap of useless frames that dangled twisted from one ear.

“You’re not mad, are you?” she asked.

“No, no, no, of course not. Man oh man!” I rubbed my face hard, because it needed it.

“Good,” she laughed. “You see, from now on you’ll think of me whenever you get slapped in the face again.”

“Oh, there won’t be a next time, I assure you,” I assured her. “I’ll never ask for it again.”

“O.K.,” she said, now sitting next to me, having kicked sand all over my beach towel getting into that position. “You pass,” she said in congratulations. “You never fight--I believe you.” She then stuck out her own hand and I suddenly shielded my head in exaggerated panic. When I opened two fingers to let an eye peep through, she still had her hand out, offering introduction. I shook hands with her.

“Ana,” she said.

“Hello, Ana,” I replied. She was beautiful, I thought; she was great.

She was almost fabulous, which is all someone needs to be.

We ate burgers that evening which were no match, grease-wise, for the ones at Eddie’s Burger Nirvana. We were at a fast food joint which was an empty place that relied heavily on spring break for most of its net income. It was on the main stretch of highway that serviced the strip of beach which was the collegian’s real reason for a Pensacola. As the plump young woman was preparing to walk our orders over to us, one of the burgers fell behind the counter.

“Oh, it’s a good thing it fell on the paper,” I heard her say. We originally ordered the hamburgers cooked differently but got them alike--technique d’Eddie--and neither was what either of us had ordered. Mine had some dirt flecks seen on the mustard. We were in beachthink, though, so none of this mattered.

“I think that’s great that you’re from New Orleans, too,” I said.

“Yea, me too,” she agreed. “Of course,” she continued, “I don’t know where I’ll end up. But my aunt’s not antsy about me staying with her till I decide.”

“No pun intended?” I quipped. Ana laughed. We each bit into our sandwiches, but mine squirted grease on her neck. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I offered, running around the table to stand behind her. I matted her dry with my shredded paper napkin.

“No, no, that’s really O.K.,” she comforted me back in my time of embarrassment. “Really, I’m wearing a bathing suit!” And she laughed again. By this time, I was still hovering over her in my aborted task of drying her neck. I just kept my hands on it, caressed the nape, which she liked. With one finger, I pivoted her chin upward and lowered my head to kiss her. She received me warmly, but not passionately. She welcomed the expression, then playfully pushed me away.

“Go. Finish your meat thing,” she urged. I returned to my seat as I was told. We both smiled at each other as we ate, and in fact had knocked down most of our burgers before we spoke again.

“Your parents?” I asked her. “Where are they if you’re living with your aunt?”

“They’re divorced.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, as if in condolence.

“Well it’s not like they’re dead, you know,” she blurted. “They both live in Louisiana. Dad lives in Baton Rouge, Mom in Lafayette.”

“What does he do?” I asked.

“That’s kind of chauvinistic,” she teased me. “What if he doesn’t do anything? What if he’s a bum, and my Mom does it all?”

“Alright,” I submitted, “what does she do?”

“She’s the bum.” Ana laughed, not at her mother, but at herself. “Actually, she’s a sculptor...or fancies herself one. She hasn’t made a nickel yet, but she’s hopeful. My dad’s a retired foot doctor--a legal bum.”

“What does she sculpt?”

“She’s a hold-out from the sixties. You know, driftwood Jonathan Livingston Seagulls, stuff like that.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure of what she said.

“I was born,” she continued, “when my parents were older than they should have been to be new parents. I guess they had accepted being permanently childless for a long time before I surprised them. Really screwed up everything for them. I was a mistake.”

“Best mistake they ever made,” I complimented.

“Thanks. That’s sweet.” She sipped some of her cola from the straw jammed into the plastic top of her cup. “I always wonder who I would have been if they had had me earlier. Yea, yea, I know--I wouldn’t be the same person and all that. But I sometimes pretend that I could be the same person, just a different version at the right time. Right for them, I mean. Maybe things would have been different. Maybe they’d still be together, who knows?”

“I wouldn’t change a single thing,” I said to her as an authority.

“And your parents?” she asked me. “Were they luckier?”

“They’re dead,” I proclaimed a little too seriously.

“Now I’m sorry,” she said, slightly offended by my bushwhacking change in tone.

“No, Ana, I’m the one who’s sorry--for snapping at you. It’s just that I’m an orphan, and I really don’t want to talk about that right now. Some other time, O.K.?”

“Sure,” she agreed, eager to re-establish the good cheer.

“Good,” I said, making it unanimous. Now I slurped my drink until the sound got louder, indicating I had slurped it dry. “Ana, how about staying with me?”

“Tonight?” she asked, as if this night were any worse or better than any other night.

“The whole time we’re here. I’ve got one of those twenty-five-dollar-a-night things right up the highway. It’s got a microwave and a VCR. We can cook up some popcorn and rent a movie.” She eyed me suspiciously. “Aw, c’mon,” I nagged, “I won’t let that little kiss give me the wrong idea.”

“Oh, I don’t mind if you get the wrong idea. I don’t even mind if it’s the right idea. I just don’t want you acting on it.”

“Boyfriend, huh? You have a boyfriend.”

“No. I want to make sure you can be a friend,” she explained.

“Before what?” I asked. She raised her finger.

“No ideas, O.K.?” she repeated.

“Done,” I agreed, taking her finger and shaking it like it were a whole hand. She seemed pleased.

We had only covered half a mile or so in our travels this whole time, so it was now noticeable to both of us that we needed transportation. She needed to get back to her acquaintances’ hotel to get her things, and then we had to make it back to my place.

“Where’s your car?” she asked me.

“I don’t have one.”

“So how did you get here?”

“I flew. Took commuter service to an airport here, then got to my motel by taxi.”

“What do you do?”

“I slide,” I answered, which was the truth. I was taking my best shot at telling her about me. If she were to think me crazy, no amount of time would ever make it any easier.

“You mean you drift. You’re a drifter?” she asked, her invested opinion of me crashing into the worst fears of ruthless, killer hitch-hiker realities. It was as if I had driven up to her on a corner and offered her some candy. I thought fast to remedy the worried look on her face.

“No, I slide. I’m taking it easy after graduating. Taking a break. Just slidin’. Just relaxin’.” She still wasn’t quite so sure.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” she started.

“Maybe you should trust your instincts, which say to trust me,” I said kindly, holding her hand.

She turned out to be the trusting type, or maybe just a good judge of character, because we spent the next few days together after that. After getting her things that night, she never again rendezvoused with her beach party while she was with me, as these were merely acquaintances she had ridden down with. That first night we both fell asleep on the pull-out sofa during a love story movie we had rented (her choice). We were both so exhausted since we had walked all that evening to get her things and then had walked back to my motel. We probably covered a couple of miles on foot that night, but it went quickly for me because of her. We traveled the highway in bathing suits. This was O.K., though, because this was Pensacola in the summer.

My motel on the highway that ran along the Gulf, The Dune something, was a sandy-carpet affair appointed in chipped Formica and a spineless mattress which she accepted the next night to my exclusion. The fold-away sofa attacked me at night with spring ends that cut through the sheets. I awoke each morning with the beach reflecting early sunlight into my eyes. I could then assess the coil wounds that made me wonder when was the last time I had a tetanus shot. Of course, being an epicurean of the tackiest ilk, I would’ve preferred my morning injuries had been from fingernails on my back. It was my disappointment that all we had was good, clean fun and no more, which just about drove me crazy, because I realized that I wasn’t going to fulfill my fantasy and be reproducing with her anytime soon. Just as incompletely as she had eclipsed the sun at our introduction, so too this beach relationship did not reach totality; for we ate, we drank, we tanned, and we rocked out to my dinosaur boombox. And that was about all.

Oh, yes, and we talked. We talked while we fried in our tanning batters, having the lazy luxury of discussing nothing pertinent. The beach fosters this theme of unimportance, with bills and rent and schedules buried deeply under whatever spot we choose to plant our behinds. Throughout this interchange wherein we held court on the esoteric truths of life which people who don’t stop to smell the flowers miss because they’re much too busy to waste very much time in a sand-saddle imprinted on the planet by gravity—during these entertaining rap sessions I spent quite a bit of time planning how I might accurately talk to her about me—that is, who I are in these many worlds that I’ve passed through. We talked of political necessities. We talked of religious attitudes and theological possibilities. We discussed the physics of possible models for an afterlife. I hadn’t discussed so extensively all of these loose fictional ends from the wondering part of my brain since I had been trapped with my “big brother” in his room at the fraternity house with his private keg of beer one night. He had said it was only a half-keg. It was more than enough. I’m a half-full sort of guy.

Ana was prettier.

She was easy to corral into profound “what if” subjects, but she was so interesting in her clarity of perceptions that at times I found myself inattentive of my plan of approaching her with the real me. She was a lot more interactive than Eddie, to be sure. Finally, somewhere in all of this force-feeding of intellectual candy came my opportunity.

And so, sharing my beach towel and the Florida sun, we ultimately talked of sliding. She had failed to make the connection with my awkward first attempt to introduce her to the idea over burgers that first night, so to my relief, this outlandish conjecture provoked neither ridicule nor recognition. She seemed just as genuinely interested in this type of theoretical speculation as she had seemed stimulated by our other conversations. I used the proper segue to present it, just as I had for all of the other philosophical possibilities we had spent hours talking about.

“That would be very sad,” she surmised of sliding.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because. One would have no friends.”

I could have cried right there in front of her.

An overwhelming emotion of sadness took me by surprise, stunned that I had never really cared deeply about this before. I stifled my tears, those strangers to me, because after all she was still theorizing. But she was quite right. I had no friends.

To Ana, sliding was just one of the subjects we dissected. Of course, to me it was the only reality. I emotionally rescued myself by realizing that it was to my utter delight that her only reality was back in New Orleans, where I also lived. She was staying there with her aunt only as long as it would take her to find an apartment of her own.

“I keep putting off the decision to move out so that I can go to the beach,” Ana said to me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Escape. You don’t have to make any decisions on the beach. Everything’s done for you. The tide flows in and out, the sun comes up and goes down, the breeze blows around over your head, and your skin gets tan automatically as you just sit and do nothing worthwhile.” She held out her arms to present me with the beach.

“The only reason this isn’t Heaven,” she announced, “is they have all of these other bodies around.”

She had finished two years of college at UNO pursuing a marketing degree, but this summer she refused to take any summer classes.

“And I might even skip next fall, too,” she grumbled. “I can earn some money for myself to finance a Yoko lifestyle for a little while.”

“Yoko lifestyle?” I asked, whatever that was.

“Yeah, you know,” she explained. “Just like John and Yoko--all the home movies you see of them, they’re just playing. They play and skip and hug and kiss. They write ‘I LOVE U’ in the sand and just play in their love. Now that’s the life.”

“So where’s this John going to figure in? You’re just going to be a Yoko solo?”

“That’s all I can afford. Look, Rudolph—God! I can’t believe I know someone named ‘Rudolph’—John and Yoko were filthy rich. I can only afford to do this one person at a time, and that’s just until the money runs out.”

“I’m filthy rich, too,” I told her. “Can I apply for the other position with you?” She eyed me skeptically.

“How filthy rich?” she challenged me.

“Disgustingly and vilely filthy rich,” I answered. She looked even more skeptical.

“So just what is it that you do?”

“I slide.”

And that was how I met Ana last layer.

No longer just one of the possible fictional scenarios of metaphysics, I now spoke of sliding in the first person. She didn’t even flinch. I spoke of my gambling successes, the victories of my personal decisions, and my prowess in my investment portfolios. She was fascinated especially by the latter as this was her area of study in college. Otherwise, she would have had no frame of reference with which to humor her curiosity, doubtful as the subject was.

This fascination of hers really excited me on all levels, if you know what I mean. Seeing my beautiful and up to now forbidden friend engrossed in me, in my life as I know it, was stimulating me in all kinds of places. I went on and on. She seemed to eat it all up, perhaps buying it, or perhaps only attending to the respect my intensity deserved.

“And do you have any friends?” she asked me. This time I did cry. She held me, stroking my hair and head.

“If I stay put I will, finally,” I said tearfully.

We had a strange day after that. We felt really close to each other. She never really said if she accepted any of this. I hoped that she did, and she did nothing to dissuade my hope. But she avoided the subject altogether until that night as we shared coffee after a wonderful Italian dinner. Everything had all gone so well until...

“So you see, Ana, I guess I’m the constant,” I told her. And then—I can’t believe it—for sex! I did that stupid thing that did not end well. My gamble had not paid off. I had invested poorly.

And that was how I lost Ana last layer. Actually, it was this layer. I had moved on, and so had this layer’s version of Ana right out of the door, not at all fascinated, engrossed, or even attending to my opening come-on line for her here.

So this layer? What am I left with now, besides a semi-open invitation to pitch in at the Burger Nirvana?

It’s pretty strange here:

They make their Rs backwards. This is the first dyslexic layer I’ve slid to. Of course, trying to act “normal” here, I get careless and make my Rs backward to these folks (but normal to me)—and I’m the one called dyslexic! They say hot for cold and cold for hot—at least the way I’m used to it. And there’s this thing in Paris called an Eiffel Tower. First layer I’ve seen it. It certainly is beautiful though—have to admit. And that’s about all of the big changes I’ve seen—except for the people.

The alterations in them--well, what the hell! They’ve taken a turn for the slightly less attractive. Don’t get me wrong. There are beautiful people here, just less of them. Just last layer there were a lot more beautiful people per unit population, I swear it. Of course I was one of them, and I remain so even here, thank God. I’ve been told that I remind people of this actor or that rock star, but those famous people have always changed while I’ve stayed the same, meaning that I’ve kept looking like different people to others. Fortunately, the differing people of different layers I remind people of are usually, like I said, the beautiful people.

I’ve got brown hair and blue eyes, am slightly taller than the average guy, and I have a dark complexion. I’m slightly lean. On my face are a few streaks of subtly darker pigment, almost like something divine has cut a swath of distinction there. It is not unattractive; on the contrary, it has always added character. I’ve heard it said that birthmarks are the reminders of some mortal blow from a past life. If that’s true, then I sometimes picture myself in a past existence in life-or-death combat with a noble beast of some sort, who of course is always personified with all of the virtuous attributes of myself and is therefore worthy of so admirable an opponent as myself.

But I guess I’ve gotten off of the subject. As I was saying, most of the people here seem to have taken a turn for the slightly less attractive. Even Ana changed slightly for the worse. A subtle bump in her nose—still a knock-out for sure, but noticeably deteriorated. And it may be my imagination, but I’d swear that there’s less sparkle in those smiley green eyes of hers.

(God, I hope she doesn’t read this. That’s another thing. I don’t know how this story, as written down, will read if I start sliding again. By the time it’s finished, it may be a lot different. Maybe I should finish it, slide all over and pick out the best draft. For all I know, someone’s reading it right now.)

More about this layer:

The people here do some pretty crazy things with their children. Like having a bra on the hood to keep the bugs from getting smashed on the car, while carting their kids around without seat belts, not worried about them getting smashed. The children are religiously instructed to actually fear their God but to blindly love their country. There is a generation gap—always has been, as I understand it.

And people here are generally uglier.

I could go on and on. Generally, you see, this layer seems to have been another deterioration. To tell you the truth, besides the thing with Ava (Ana’s name here), I’m kind of scared to slide on because of the degeneration. What if it got even worse?

Slide back? –Never been able to do it intentionally. I can slide, as I explained to Eddie, but I’ve never intentionally gone in a direction before; so I had better be careful, you see, ’cause I have to live here, or there, too.

More about me:

I actually have just finished college. I went to LSU and majored in Mathematics. At one point there I tried to major in History, but the subject matter would change every time I’d slide. Anyway, I did college. Look, you have to remember, sliding is almost instantaneous. I had to do all of my regular living while I existed. That means grade school, high school, and college. It just so happens that at graduation I slid about forty times until I was summa cum laude.

But I wasn’t the one who had changed, remember? So that means that as a random general deterioration, people around me, comparatively, are stupider here.

Back to my fears:

There must be a final layer where everyone is incredibly stupid, horrendously ugly, and shamelessly nonsensical. And I don’t want to go there. This layer is about as close as I want to get. But that final layer of my onion-universe, “the peel,” as I call it, must be down the road somewhere.

So my fun’s over, you think. Well, not exactly. If the peel is out there one way, then there must be a really great layer (“the core”?) back the other way.

But toward the core, wouldn’t I be uglier and stupider? Comparatively, that is. I really don’t know which would be worse. Is it more exhilarating to be a stud or to be surrounded by them? A genius or be the only one who isn’t? I linger in this layer, considering whether I’ll ever slide again and risk whatever chance I have for Ava’s affections; and risk ugly; risk stupid.

And risk direction.

New Orleans is a pretty nice place, except for the humidity, aka, the wall that it is. It is thick, I suppose, to carry the sound waves better, which so effortlessly causes music to flow to anyone who would simply care to listen. And the food’s so good it’ll kill you. After graduation from LSU in Baton Rouge I just had to come back here, even though this is where the series of fortuitous slides had brought me anyway. Of course, since I was orphaned before I finished college, I’ve pretty much been on my own since then, which is when I began going hog wild and making the bulk of my money.

Ava is a true southern belle. In contrast to my first sighting of Ana’s beach-gait, Ava can be seen gliding like she’s rolling on wheels. She says she is still my friend. “Platonic,” she calls it. I’m extremely fortunate that I’ve recouped that much after my blunder. But platonic is still a far cry from what might have been.

Damn!

She also says I’m a little harmlessly nuts—just enough to be entertaining. She doesn’t even come close to accepting my premise. Even when she saw my bank balance.

“If you ‘slide’ right here,” she asked me one evening over coffee (after an Italian dinner, which makes me think of Ana), “will I be an Ava who has two sugars in my coffee?”

“Maybe,” I answered. “But I’d rather just get you the extra sugar.” She laughed as I reached over to the other table. As I did, I wondered that if I slid, might I be back with Ana. Dangerous thinking, of course. I suppressed those chemicals in my brain that made me think like that.

“And if you slide, I’ll automatically have plastic surgery for this bump in my nose?” she asked, her way of showing irritation for a careless observation to her earlier in the evening.

“No, no; that resolution would mean I’ll be in a layer where you never had that bump.”

“Well do it,” she commanded, her serious tone part of her tease.

“Hey sure, but maybe I’ll continue in ‘the direction,’ and you’ll have a wart on your nose with hair coming out of it.”

“Stay put,” she commanded again with slightly less tease.

“Of course you won’t mind, because you would have been used to it, being the person you had been.” My words offered no comfort.

That’s about as far as we talked about sliding. The rest of the conversation was the usual boy-girl stuff, and I made no further progress in slide acceptance the rest of the date. Last layer, as Ana, I think she actually believed me. She was even interested in slide theory. You know, could she slide with me if we embraced while I slid—things like that.

And I slid into this layer hoping for a submitting Ana, so I tried a line.

“We’d be able to slide together, Ana, only at simultaneous orgasm,” I joked. That was the blunder.

But the slide was to this lousy layer. As the new Ava, she got offended and walked out—well, you already know about that. I told her I was just kidding, but it was to no avail. So now I’m unrequited, she’s got a bump on her nose, and we are, as she says, platonic. Hell, why didn’t I try that line on the layer we were in? Some summa cum laude!

Let me tell you something else that I think I’ve figured out about this sliding business. Forget the onion for a minute. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a big reality bowl. I slid back and forth from world to world on the bottom of this bowl all of my life. Being on the bottom of the bowl, there wasn’t much slope to my rolling around, so I figure things don’t change very much. But every now and then I get some momentum, I guess, and slide up one side a little too far where things get extreme, like here. I’m pushed up the side and there’s a different perspective, be it backwards Rs or subtle nose bumps. I’m really probably safe to slide again and roll back to the level, stable, reasonable bottom of the bowl, where bumps are harder to find and lovers are receptive. I figure I seek, like most things in physics, a stable layer, and that something powerful must have given me the momentum to scale up an ugly side—a direction—of my reality bowl.

Do you want to know what I think it was? I think it was love, that’s what. I wanted Ana, had to have her, and was ready to slide around in my bowl just to slide around on her. So why did love take me to a worse place where people are uglier, Eddie’s is greasier, and where the very person I crave, now Ava, is denied me as a crucial difference? Not to mention that appropriate phallic symbol in Paris which as far as I’m concerned represents my desire refused.

That settles it, I’m sliding. I will control my lust and therefore roll back to bowl bottom—no momentum—get out of this stupid layer. That’s the plan, now that I arrive at my apartment building after a therapeutic day of myself pounding away at poor Eddie and my feet pounding away at the pavement from Burger Nirvana to here. Yes, I will slide.

But first I’ll have an ice hot beer.

THIS BOOK IS FINISHED. I WILL BE UPLOADING CHAPTERS PIECEMEAL, AWAITING FEEDBACK. FEEL FREE! THANKS.