Pay As You Go

A finalist for the 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award. Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize. Named a best book of 2023 by NPR. New to town and delusionally confident, Slide imagined himself living in a glossy building with doormen and sweeping views of the skyline. Instead he's landed in a creaking, stuffy apartment with two roommates: a loping giant who hardly leaves his room, and a weight-obsessed neurotic who keeps no fewer than forty-seven lamps throughout the house, blazing at all hours. Unwilling to accept this fate, Slide-a barber with an opaque past-embarks on a quest for the perfect apartment, pinballing through the sprawling, madcap city of Polis and its endless procession of neighborhoods. As he bounces from foldout couch to disaster-relief tent, falling in with some tough types, Slide begins to realize that he's going to have to scratch and claw just to claim a place for himself in this world-let alone a place with in-unit laundry. An exuberant, fantastical odyssey, Pay As You Go wonders if what we're searching for is ever really out there. Its pages-surreal, biting, and teeming with life-announce the startling talents of Eskor David Johnson, who knows that all any of us really want is a place to rest our head.