Real Life(6)

“Knock on wood.”

“God,” Vincent said.

“Hey now.” Cole put his arm around Vincent, but Vincent just shook him off. He dropped his dish on the table and ice cream leapt over the rim of the cup, splattering the table. A drop of white—lukewarm like spit—landed on Wallace’s wrist.

“What would you do if you didn’t have this? If you had to fend for yourselves?” said Vincent. He looked at each of them. Miller had raised his eyebrows. Yngve turned a little red. Wallace pinched some of Cole’s napkins to wipe his wrist clean.

“Fend for ourselves? Excuse me, but you work in finance. Not exactly roughing it,” Cole said.

“I didn’t say I was roughing it. I’m just saying, what if you had to fend for yourself? Think for yourself? Plan your own fucking life. You’d be lost.”

“I don’t plan my life? My project? My experiments? Are you telling me we haven’t planned our life together? We have furniture, Vincent.”

“Because I bought furniture. When I showed up here, you were basically living in a frat house with these two,” Vincent said, sharply motioning toward Yngve and Miller, who looked on stoically. “Plywood on buckets for end tables. Jesus Christ. You don’t know anything about furniture, just like you wouldn’t know the first thing about getting a real job, real health insurances, taxes. We can’t even take a real vacation. Five days in Indiana—what a great time. Wonderful.”

“We spent last summer in Mississippi with your parents, didn’t we?”

“Yes, but your family hates gay people, Cole. There’s a difference.”

Wallace laughed and then clamped his mouth shut as tightly as he could. He again felt the edge of shame at seeing something private turning horribly public right before his very eyes. And yet he could not look away. They had begun this argument with smiles and soft feints at violence, but now they were snarling at each other. Cole had slid away from Vincent, and Vincent from Cole, which made their bench twist awkwardly. The food slid down the table, now at an angle. Miller caught the nachos before they hit the ground.

Cole smiled at Wallace. “Back me up. It’s Mississippi.”

“I’m from Alabama,” Wallace said, but Cole closed his eyes.

“You know what I mean. Same difference.”

“I’m from Indiana, and even I think it’s pretty terrible,” Miller said. “Vincent has a point.”

“You’re basically from Chicago,” Cole said. “This is not—Vincent just hates my family.”

“I do not hate your family. Your family is wonderful. Just deeply racist and wildly homophobic.”

“My aunt is racist,” Cole said to Wallace.

“His mother said their church is struggling. Tell them what the struggle is, Cole.”

“A black family joined the congregation. Or tried to. Is trying to?” Cole said, putting his hands over his face. His neck was deep maroon.

“So don’t tell me they aren’t—”

“There were no black people in my church when I was growing up,” Miller said. “Before I stopped going, anyway. It’s Indiana.”

“I mean, my family didn’t really go to church,” Yngve said. “Like, there were no black people in my town either. But my grandparents love black people. They say the Swedes are the blacks of Scandinavia.”

Wallace choked a little on his own saliva. Yngve squirmed and returned to his taco.

“Anyway, there is more to life than your pipettes and epi tubes,” Vincent said evenly. “You’re all just playing at being adults with your plastic toys.”

Cole was about to respond when Wallace opened his mouth, surprising even himself. “It is silly, isn’t it? Still being in school like this. I wonder sometimes, what am I doing here? I guess it’s not so silly. Lots of people think that. But still, I think about what it might be like to leave. Do something else. Something real, as you say, Vincent.” He laughed as he talked. He looked past his friends to the soccer team, who had settled and grown closer and were now so transfixed by whatever they saw that they didn’t even think to talk or move or drink their beers. Wallace dug his thumb into the top of his knee until it stung. “I guess I sort of hate it, sometimes, I guess. I hate it here.”

The words fell out of him like the exhalation of some hot, dense space inside him, and when he was done talking, he looked up, thinking that no one had really been paying attention. That’s how it was. He talked and people drifted in and out of concentration. But when he looked up, Wallace saw that each of them was looking at him with what seemed to be tender shock.

“Oh,” he said, a little startled. Miller went on eating his nachos, but Cole and Yngve narrowed their eyes. Their shadows slid across the table. They felt close.

“You can leave, you know,” Vincent said. His voice was warm on Wallace’s neck. “If you’re unhappy, you can always leave. You don’t have to stay.”

“Wait a minute, wait, hold on, wait, don’t go telling him that,” Cole said. “You can’t just take it back if you leave.”

“Doing things that you can’t take back is what the real world is, babe.”

“Listen to yourself. Suddenly you’re a life coach? You’re literally a telemarketer.”