Real Life(7)

“You’re so pretentious,” Vincent hissed. “Like, to a terrifying degree sometimes.”

Cole bent around Vincent to stare at Wallace. “Leaving will not make you feel better. Leaving is just quitting.”

“You can’t just decide what is too hard for someone else,” Vincent said hotly. Wallace reached out and placed his palm against Vincent’s back. He was sweating through his shirt. His body vibrated like a plucked string.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Wallace said, but Vincent hardly heard him. “Don’t pressure him,” he said to Cole. “What is this, a cult?”

“Where is Lukas, I wonder,” Yngve said, loud enough that the soccer team heard him. “Do you know, Cole?”

“He’s with Nate, I think,” Cole said, but he was still staring at Vincent. Yngve flinched. Lukas and Yngve had been more or less in love with each other since their first year, but Yngve was straight and eventually Lukas got tired of pining and found himself a boyfriend who was in vet school. It was an odd but also correct choice, Wallace thought. Sometimes, at parties, when Yngve got very drunk, he said things like Sleeping with a vet is like bestiality. Like, it’s not even a real discipline. Lukas would just shrug and let it go. Yngve had a girlfriend anyway. Wallace felt sorry for both of them. It seemed more miserable than was strictly necessary.

“Are they coming?”

“Not if they’re smart,” Vincent said.

The ice cream had turned to a white slurry. Gnats had left the vines on the retaining wall to dart with purpose through the dark at their food. Wallace fanned them away.

“You didn’t have to come. You could have stayed at home,” Cole said.

“These are my friends too.”

“Now they are. Now they’re your friends.”

“What did you just say to me?”

Wallace glanced at Yngve, who looked terrified; and at Miller, who looked impassive, as if he were sitting at another table entirely. Wallace nodded at Cole and Vincent, but Miller just shrugged. Not surprising. In fact, Wallace himself knew better than to get involved in this sort of skirmish, but he felt bad, like it was his fault. Yngve nudged Miller, but his supreme apathy would not be disturbed. Vincent breathed hard and fast. Water rocked against the hulls of the boats tied near the shore.

“No one is quitting. No one is leaving. We’re having a damn good time,” Wallace said.

“Yeah, right,” was Vincent’s reply, but Cole cracked a smile. “Don’t be such a crybaby.”

“I’m not. No one’s crying,” Cole said, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm.

“Poor baby, poor baby,” Yngve said as he reached over and ran his hand through Cole’s hair. “Are you gonna make it?”

“Leave it,” Cole said. He sounded terribly small. He was laughing, but he was crying too. They all tried very hard not to see that, tried to pretend that the moisture in his eyes was something else. Poor Cole, Wallace thought, always so close to the surface. Watching him wipe at his eyes made Wallace’s throat hot.

“Well, looks like he’s going to pull through,” Wallace said. These were his friends, the people who knew him best and cared for him most in the world. They were once more sitting in that awful, full silence, except this time Wallace was sure that it was his fault. He had caused the argument, him and his big mouth. But the funny thing, the joke of it that even he was only just now starting to understand, was that he had said only a part of the truth. Yes, he thought about leaving, and yes, he hated it here sometimes. But running through that feeling like hard, resolute bone was something else: It wasn’t so much that he wanted to leave graduate school as that he wanted to leave his life. The truth of that feeling fit under his skin like a new, uncomfortable self, and he couldn’t get rid of it once he acknowledged it. It was all the same, gray waiting, a fear of not being able to take it all back.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Wallace,” Yngve said, and Wallace tried to smile. He was breathless with the knowledge of it. Yngve did not return Wallace’s smile. Cole tipped forward to look at him. Vincent too. Miller even, furtively, from his food, eating the jalape?os in big handfuls.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Really.” His throat was tight. There was not enough air. He could feel himself sinking under.

“You want some water or something?” Vincent asked.

“No, no. Yes. I’ll get it,” Wallace said, croaked. He stood up. Balanced himself with his hand as the world swung loose. He shut his eyes. There was a palm on his forearm. Cole reaching out, but Wallace pulled himself away. “Hey, don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“I’ll come with you,” Cole said.

“I said stay. Relax.” Wallace grinned, his gums on fire. His teeth ached. He broke away from the table, but he could tell they were watching him still. He made for the lake. He would gather himself until he could once again present to his friends a reasonable semblance of happiness.



* * *



? ? ?

AT THE EDGE OF THE WATER, stone steps descended to the murky bottom of the lake. They were made from a kind of harsh, unfinished stone that had been smoothed by the water and the foot traffic. There were, two or three arm lengths away from Wallace, other people sitting too, watching the moon rise. And on the distant shore, past where the peninsula, furred with pine and spruce trees, hooked into the lake like a thumb, there were houses raised up on great stilts, the lights in the windows like the eyes of some large birds. Wallace had thought at times when he took the lakeshore path at night, looking through the scrim of trees, that all those houses did look like a flock of enormous birds crouching on the other side. He had never been over there himself, had never had a reason to cross the lake to that rarefied and separate part of town.