History of Wolves(40)

What were you thinking? I was asked on the stand. I could not bring myself to say that it was Europa’s capital, that pile of leaves and rocks on the bedroom floor. I could not bring myself to tell them what I’d meant to tell Paul—who, when I’d seen him last, had been looking out from his bed with just one open eye. Half his face had been smashed against a pillow. No one lives in Europa, I’d wanted to tell him when he got back home. Not yet, maybe not ever, but the capital has been built and there are trains that go on the ocean floor, and submarines and floating cranes, and it’s not a city for people. It’s not for fairies or aliens or anything cute and fantastical. It’s just a city, I’d wanted to say. It’s just a city, with trains and diggers and bulldozers and roads.


This is how I remember leaving Duluth. Patra needed help folding up the cotton blanket, which we shook free of grass, and I remember how those blades were so green in the sun they were almost blue. When we got to the car, Patra and Leo had a short discussion about what to do next, and it was decided that we head back to Loose River early, that afternoon. Leo wanted Patra to walk back and check out of the hotel while he waited with Paul in the car. They had a little argument about it, actually, the first argument I heard them have. They didn’t yell at each other or raise their voices. They just stood on opposite sides of the car and squinted at each other in the sun, first disputing who should stay with Paul in the car and who should go back to the hotel and pay, and then, caught in the orbit of arguing, they switched right into bitter apology, Patra pleading, “I’m sorry, Leo,” and Leo responding, “No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let myself get upset over such a little thing. You stay with Paul. I’ll go back.”

Paul sat this out in the backseat. I stood near him in the open car door, near him but not too close. He didn’t want to be touched. “The weather is under me,” he said, and I couldn’t help smiling.

“You’re under the weather, you mean.”

He was too busy drinking to respond. After taking a few sloppy sips of lemonade, and then, sweating instantly from the effort of this, taking a gulp or two from the plastic water bottle Patra produced—after dampening the whole front of his shirt with some combination of lemonade, water, and saliva, he set his head against his car seat, took a shallow breath, and closed his eyes.

Patra sat in the backseat with him. She gave me the key, so I climbed in the passenger seat to turn on the air. It blew hot as breath for a minute or two, then gradually cooled, so we rolled up all the windows and sat in the chilled car, cut off from the summery world outside. I had the impulse then, as my sweat dried, to slide to the driver’s seat and pull the gearshift into drive. It would be simple I thought. How hard could driving be?

“He’s not himself today,” Patra said from the backseat. I glanced back at her. I assumed she meant Paul at first, but she was staring out the window in the direction of the hotel. So it was Leo she meant. She unclasped her breath the way people do when they’re about to speak, then closed her mouth again, chewed on her lip.

I curled around more fully, peeped at her over the seat. “Is the temp okay?” I asked, coaxing her out. I wanted her to unload her worry, like she did in the tent. I wanted her to need me for something she couldn’t do herself.

“Yes, thank you. Thank you, Linda.” She gave me a smile that was all forehead. She was gazing down at Paul, who’d drifted off. She was petting his long bare arm with one hand.

I tested out her gratitude: “Do you want me to pull the car up a little bit? Do you want me to get out of this traffic?” Cars kept honking at us, hoping to get our parking spot.

She considered it. “Do you have your license?”

“No,” I admitted.

“That’s okay.” She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, and in the bright sunlight I thought I could see her eyeballs moving beneath her pale lids. Oh, there are her black pupils, I thought, triumphantly, frightened almost, but then she shielded her whole face with her hand and whatever I saw was gone.

She said, “Leo’ll come for us in a moment.”

I didn’t like how she put that. I didn’t like how confident she sounded. I didn’t like how she changed with Leo around, how all her gestures were stretched out of size with a touch of performance. I didn’t like how deferential she was with him, but also charged somehow, confident she could draw his attention if she wanted it.

Her headband was making my head pound. I could feel its teeth in a cruel crown from ear to ear. I felt just miserable enough to take a swipe at her.

“Where’d you guys meet?”

Patra opened her eyes. She checked Paul before meeting my gaze. “Leo and me?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“He was my professor.”

I felt smug. “At the University of Chicago?”

“How’d you know?”

She’d worn that sweatshirt about a thousand times. I shrugged.

“Astronomy 101.” She wrinkled her nose, making the smiley rueful expression I was coming to recognize. She set her hand on Paul’s sleeping forehead. “I thought it’d be easy. I thought we’d memorize constellations, learn the names of planets. That sort of thing.”

“Did you?”

“We did some of that, sure.” She caught my eye. “It’s not what you think.”