Real Life(4)

Yngve was on his phone, his face caught up in its glow, more pronounced now that night was coming on. Darkness seeped into the sky like a slowly spreading stain. The lake had turned metallic and ominous. It was the part of a summer evening just past the blue hour, when everything began to cool and settle down. There was something salty in the wind, a charged potential.

“We haven’t seen much of you this summer,” said Vincent. “Where have you been hiding?”

“At home, I guess. Though I didn’t know I was hiding.”

“We had Roman and Klaus over the other night—did Cole tell you?”

“This is the first time I’m really seeing the boys all week, I think. It’s been a little hellish.”

“Well, it wasn’t anything special. Just dinner. You didn’t miss much.”

If it wasn’t anything special, Wallace thought, then why bring it up? He’d gone to their barbecue, hadn’t he? But even there, he remembered, Vincent had said how good it was to see Wallace, how they never saw him anymore these days, he never came out with them or asked about them. It’s like you don’t exist, Vincent had said with a laugh, and Wallace had watched the thick vein down the center of his forehead engorge, wishing with a calm cruelty that it would rupture. Wallace saw Cole, Yngve, Miller, and Emma at the biosciences building almost every day. They nodded to each other, waved, acknowledged each other in a dozen small ways. He did not go out with them, it was true, not to their favorite bars or that time they’d all crammed into two cars and gone apple picking or that time they went hiking at Devil’s Lake. He didn’t go with them because he never quite felt like they wanted him there. He always got stuck on the edges, talking to whoever pitied him enough to throw him a bone of small talk. Yet here was Vincent, making like Wallace was the only reason he didn’t spend time with them, as if they were not also to blame.

Wallace smiled as best he could. “Sounds like you had a great time.”

“And Emma and Thom came over last week. We had a little lunch by the pool and went to the dog park. Scout is getting huge.” Vincent’s forehead vein bulged again, and Wallace imagined placing his thumb over it, pressing hard. Wallace made an assenting sound in the back of his throat like Well, look at that.

“Where are Emma and Thom? I thought they were coming,” Yngve said.

“Getting Scout shampooed.”

“How long does it take to shampoo a dog?” Yngve asked in exaggerated outrage.

“Depends,” Vincent said, laughing, looking at Wallace, who was not above much but certainly considered himself above making jokes about dog shit and so simply cleared his throat. Vincent drummed his fingers on the table. “Okay, but seriously, what have you been doing, Wallace? You think you’re too important to hang out with your friends?”

It was a stupid thing to say. Even Yngve’s eyes widened at it. Wallace hummed as if in deep thought, waiting for the flare of irritation and humiliation to subside. Vincent’s expression was patient and expectant. Wallace saw a flurry of action at the next table: The soccer boys had started shoving each other, the white of the shirts glowing, so many bright rectangles falling across each other like in a postwar painting.

“Working, for one thing,” he said. “That’s the only thing, really.”

“We love a martyr,” Vincent said. “I suppose that’s what we’ll be talking about tonight. Our Lady of Perpetual Lab.”

“We don’t talk about lab all the time,” Yngve said, but Wallace could only laugh, even if it was at his own expense. It was true: Lab was the only thing they talked about. No matter the subject, the conversation always found its way back: I was running a column the other day, and you will not believe this, yes, I eluted before I finished my last wash. Someone didn’t fill the tip boxes, so guess who spent four hours at the autoclave? Is it so hard to expect them to put my pipette back where they found it? They just come and take and never return. Wallace could understand Vincent’s frustration. Vincent had moved to town during their second year to be with Cole, and during the week they all were waiting for their final exam grades, he had thrown a holiday housewarming party. Instead of drinking cheap beer and admiring the sleek chrome and leather sectional, they had huddled in a corner whispering about the 610 final, with its unexpected helix question at the end, and the 508 exam, which had included a question about free energy changes in various osmotic conditions that had taken Wallace five pieces of paper and calculus he hadn’t even thought of since undergrad to solve. Vincent had spent the evening decorating the tree himself while they moaned and fretted, and Wallace had felt sorry for him. But it was automatic, this reflex to turn to lab, because as long as they were talking about science they didn’t have to attend to other worries. It was as if graduate school had wiped away the people they’d been before they arrived.

For Wallace, at least, this had been the whole point. And yet he had begun to feel, this summer in particular, something he had never felt before: that he wanted something more. He was unhappy, and for the first time in his life, that unhappiness did not seem entirely necessary. Sometimes he yearned to trust this impulse, to leap out of his life and into the vast, incalculable void of the world.

“I work, too, but you don’t see me talking about it all the time. Because I know it would bore you,” Vincent said.