Excerpt from The Slip by Lucas Schaefer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

David scanned the lot for Terry's truck, considered driving away. It had been years since David visited the gym on a weekday afternoon, when the real fighters outnumbered the laity, and while he craved the relief a workout would provide, he knew he'd probably be the heaviest and oldest guy training.

He would've preferred his normal after-work routine: a trip to Central Market, Dutch oven simmering and a cool glass of pinot gris at the ready by the time his wife stepped through the door. But Ramona Stew, chief nursing officer at Brackenridge Hospital, had a dinner meeting, which meant that if David—who was prone to introspection but tried hard not to be—went home, he'd be left alone to consider what he'd made of his forty-seven years on this planet.

How was it that a man who'd climbed the ranks at Shoal Creek, from orderly to chief orderly, social services to activities, all the way to administration, a man who now lived among the UT professoriate in leafy Hyde Park, how was it that this man found himself, summer after summer, regaling sulky skater boys and teenage Dungeon Masters with stories of invented sex partners, when he still had an actual sex partner with whom he had actual sex?

They'd been married nearly thirty years, David and Ramona. Despite his creaky knees and her lousy back, he even still licked the sweetness on occasion, though he wouldn't phrase it that way in front of his wife, for Ramona was the sort of earthy Austin woman who felt strongly that if you're too squeamish to call a body part by its proper name you probably shouldn't stick your tongue in it, either.

What would Ramona say if she ever learned about her husband's "lessons"? He'd continued with them all that morning, into the afternoon. Had Nathaniel ever taken two women at once? Taken three? Did he wash himself properly ahead of the act? "Before you fill the cavity," the teacher had told his pupil, "you always clean the drill."

David got out of the car.

Time to punch it out, he told himself. Every now and then, David managed to truly let go at the boxing gym, to get so lost in a workout he could channel another version of himself—a better version. Nothing like smacking the shit out of a heavy bag to get your head on straight. The problem he'd created for himself was, objectively, a silly one, but David knew that like a scrape resulting in sepsis, silly could turn serious if left untreated.

In the shower before his shift that morning, David had vowed, once and for all, to forsake the filthy talk. He'd made this commitment before, but always, till then, in the gloom of the just-after: no easier time to swear off drinking than once he'd emptied the bottle. Today—Monday, June 1—was supposed to be different. 1998 was different. That winter, only a month after the Drudge Report published the name Monica Lewinsky for the first time, a sexual harassment allegation had led to the ouster of a custodian at Shoal Creek. Now text-heavy posters outlining the Federal Sexual Harassment Policy adorned the walls of the staff locker room, and HR had instituted a mandatory half-day training on the subject for all employees. If any summer was the summer for Professor Dalice to go on sabbatical, it was this one, especially since his latest student was the nephew of an actual friend. David knew he needed to, and he intended to, right up until the moment he saw that dumpy boy.

"Dalice," grunted Terry Tucker from behind the desk in his small front office. Terry was sorting crumpled cash into piles, didn't look up as he spoke.

"Terry Tucker motherfucker," sang David. "How's business?"

"Be better if you ever paid." Terry was a small and muscular white guy with a brown goatee and, at the moment, rectangular readers halfway down his nose. His first real job had been working under David, who was three years older, as an assistant housekeeper at Shoal Creek. In the quarter century since, the men had maintained an uneasy friendship. David had seen what Terry had been like as a young man—talk about a lemon—and his unlikely rise both annoyed and fascinated David, Terry the canker sore he could never stop licking.

Excerpted from The Slip by Lucas Schaefer. Copyright © 2025 by Lucas Schaefer. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.