He had seen a house on the highway as a kid, and now he was riding inside of one. Young Paul had been so astonished that he had shrieked at the sight of it. His old man had reached into the backseat of the family sedan and struck him in the temple.
“You sound
like a f--got. Enough!”
He
remembered his mom looking back, her troubled hazel eyes that did nothing. She
had nodded when his dad frowned at her.
Gazing
out the window of his back foyer now, gripping the railing along the staircase
for balance, he saw a kid in the passenger seat point at him excitedly. The
boy’s mother only glanced down, probably at her phone. Paul waved to the boy
and struggled up the steps.
In
the living room he had to crouch low as the semi towing his house navigated a
bend in the road. The house shook and rattled and the last red cup in what used
to be a triangle skidded off the table he had set up for beer pong. Early in
the three-hour trip, Paul had frantically nailed ropes taut wall-to-wall and
secured the table in place. But it was only a matter of time before the game
proved unsustainable. The stench of Coors Lights soaking into the carpet turned
his stomach. On top of the motion sickness.
“On
top of the shitty pancreas,” Paul laughed.
He grabbed
hold of a rope and then dove for the railing that led upstairs. He caught it as
his hip thudded against the floor. He pulled himself up the stairs to the oak
hallway, grabbed the skateboard in the corner, anchored by a brick. Paul
wondered how much time he had left to land an ollie before they reached their
destination on heavenly Elkhart Lake.
He
checked his phone. Twenty minutes left and 21 messages from his fiancée. The
phone rang. He wretched puke and blood down the staircase. On the sixth ring he
answered.
“Yyyyello?”
he said, wiping his mouth.
“Where
the hell are you?!”
“Jen.
Sometimes you gotta say… chemo/ shmemo. So, I sorta did go through with
relocating my house. And I kinda snuck onboard.”
Jen erupted.
Paul cried, waited.
