“I wish those two would get together already,” Emma says. “It’s giving me a headache.”
“No kidding. But I think it’s sweet.”
“To be led on that way?”
“No one is leading anyone here. They’re in the same place.”
“If you say so,” Emma says against Wallace’s back, her arms around him. He does not know if it’s a gesture that’s meant to comfort him or comfort her, if he’s meant to be pulling strength from her nearness or if she is trying to steady herself.
“Thom doesn’t hate us,” he says. “He can’t.”
“He does. I think he does. Every time we come out to one of these things, he’s sulky for weeks. He doesn’t talk to me. I know that when I go home, he’s going to freeze me out.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks I’m always looking for a way out.”
“Are you?”
“Maybe,” she says, “but aren’t we all? All the time?”
“Maybe,” he says, and they share a laugh.
“I think that’s why everyone is so on edge with you. Because you said it. You actually said it. You want out. You broke this illusion we all have. That it’s always going to be like this, that what we have now is good.”
“But it is good.” Wallace takes her arms and pulls them tighter around him. She kisses his hair and then his ear. She has forgiven him. Wallace relaxes.
“I don’t know if it’s good. Sometimes, I think that this is all I’ve ever wanted. Good research. Steady. Learning all the time. Other days I’m just miserable and want to cry. We all are, I think. In our way. We’re all fucking miserable in this place. But then, to actually hear it. It’s like somebody said something rude during church.”
“Is this church?”
“Hush, you know what I mean. I felt like, Oh no, oh no. First, I wanted to hug you. Because I’ve had days like that. Then I wanted to strangle you so you’d hush and not make us all think about it.”
But the difference, Wallace wants to say, is that you have the option of not thinking about it. His misery is not novel, but it is distinct. They’ve all lost data, ruined experiments. There was the time in second year when Yngve’s crystals failed to come out of solution and he was left with a flurried mess, all because he’d miscalculated the concentration of potassium in his buffer. Or the time Miller killed off a venerable line of bacterial cells in his lab that had been handed down from postdoc to postdoc for some twenty years because he’d taken the entire container from the -80°C freezer rather than a small aliquot and blown it all in a failed inoculation. Another time, Emma forgot to upload her latest data to the server and her laptop crashed, and there was no way to recover her qPCR runs, and she had to repeat the experiment, which took weeks. Or the time Cole dumped acid down the drain and chased it with bleach, resulting in an evacuation of the fifth floor. There were days in all their lives when things went wrong and they were forced to ask themselves if they wanted to go on. Decisions were made every day about what sort of life they wanted, and they always answered the same: Only this, only this. But that was the misery of trying to become something, misery that you could put up with because it was native to the act of trying. But there are other kinds of misery, the misery that comes from other people.
Is this what Dana was trying to say to him earlier? That he’s not the only one who has a hard time? That he doesn’t have some sort of monopoly on misery? But it’s different, he wanted to say then and wants to say now. It’s different. Can’t you see that? It’s different.
He could say this. It seems possible. But he knows what will happen. Wallace rolls his shoulders. If he makes a point of this, Emma will shake her head. She will refuse it. She will say that he’s pitying himself, that he’s not special. That he is not alone in his feeling of inadequacy. And this is perhaps a little true. And it’s that small truth of it that makes it dangerous to him. They do not understand that for them it will get better, while for him the misery will only change shape. She will say, Get over yourself, Wally, and she will smile and put her arms around his shoulders, and she will love him and try her best to understand him, and he will accept this, and he will go quiet and she will sense that something has gone wrong, but he will not tell her. And it will be as if nothing has happened at all.
“All right,” Wallace says.
Miller comes back with a beer and a small dish of pretzels. Emma waves it off, and Wallace shakes his head.
“I better take the coffee out,” she says. “Help me.”
Wallace takes a tray with several mismatched mugs bearing the logos of football and basketball teams. There is also a beautiful cherry red mug that he purchased for one of the boys during a gift exchange. Wallace received a small inflatable duck for his trouble, which made him laugh at the time as he held it up to them. Already, that seems so long ago.
It is even cooler than earlier in the backyard, and the skyline above the fence is rimmed in dark blue. The lights of the capitol building are in the distance, white beams turned gauzy, like a dream. There’s a small table made up of wooden crates, and Wallace sets the cups here. Emma brings out the carafe of dark coffee and some cream and sugar. Wallace sits on the edge of the blanket. Miller takes the spot next to him, which annoys Emma, but she sits in front of Wallace, and he encircles her with his arms.
Yngve is stooped over the table, pouring coffee, when he spots Miller. He grins and straightens up to his full height.
“Okay, okay. So everyone is here now. Perfect.”
Lukas and Nathan are lying together now, their hands entwined. Vincent and Cole are over near the garden, whispering quietly. Everything is hushed and perfect.
“All right, Miller, come, come.” Yngve waves his hands several times, trying to get Miller to come to him, and Miller eventually relents. Wallace watches him go. Roman takes Miller’s spot. Klaus is chattering in German on the phone near the tree. Yngve steers Miller in the direction of Zoe, who is wearing a terrific cardigan, slouchy, dark, a hole in the shoulder, surely too big for her.
“Wallace,” Roman says, which draws Wallace’s gaze up as Roman sits in Miller’s spot. Wallace nods. Roman smells like gin. His eyes fall on Klaus, then back to Wallace. “I’m in big trouble there.” He says it with a smile, a wink.
“It’s like that, I hear,” Wallace says.
“Catching too,” Roman says, looking pointedly in the direction of Cole and Vincent.
“That time of the year,” Wallace says.
“You surprise me,” Roman says. Emma cranes her neck back to look at Roman.
“I surprise myself.”
“Hush,” Emma says. “Yngve is doing his best matchmaker.”
Wallace tries to listen. Zoe talks with her hands. Big, sweeping gestures. She is miming some sort of climbing technique. She has her hands out, gripping stone, scaling some forbidding craggy surface. Miller nods. Mimes back. Her hands ghost down to his hips, adjust him just so, maneuver his hands. She holds his wrist steady. Yngve laughs loud, claps Miller on the back.
“I didn’t know you were on the app, Wallace. I thought you’d be above that sort of thing. I’ve never seen you there.”
“I blocked you,” Wallace says without looking away from Miller and Zoe. They look like the sort of people he sees sometimes at the pier or in cafés, pushing strollers. The sort of couple the world lays itself open for. They do not seem unalike in sensibility. Miller has folded his arm across his chest. He props his chin up with his knuckles.
“That hurts,” Roman says.
“I doubt that.”
“It’s true. It doesn’t hurt much. But it does sting. We are friends, aren’t we?”
“Is that what you use the app for, Roman? Friendship?”
“Sometimes,” he says. “What do you use it for? Weight Watchers?”
Wallace turns to Roman, gives him the attention
he is so desperate for.
“What do you want, Roman?”
“I have a theory,” he says. “I have a theory that you lied. That you’re not the one on the app.”
“Shut up,” Emma says to Roman. “It’s getting good now.”
Wallace follows her eyes back to Miller and Zoe, but the two of them are still just talking. Yngve’s hand is resting on Miller’s shoulder, and Yngve has turned around to stare at Lukas and Nathan, who are lying down. There’s nothing about the moment that corresponds to anything getting good, or being different from the moment it was before, and so Wallace is confused, annoyed. He pinches Emma’s hip. She lets out a sharp hiss of pain.
“Use your eyes, stupid. Look.”
Wallace does look.
“I think you’re covering for someone,” Roman says.
Wallace looks and looks, and there it is: Yngve’s face. It was hidden from Wallace at first, but when he shifts his weight, his annoyance is clear. He is staring in mild fury at Nathan and Lukas, his jaw working from side to side. His hand is gripping Miller so tight that Miller reaches for his wrist. “Hey, hey, Yngve, bud, hey, you gotta let me go,” Miller says. Yngve looks startled, finds his way back to himself.
“I think it’s Cole,” Roman says finally. “I think you’re covering for Cole.” He all but breathes it into Wallace’s ear, his breath wet and warm. Wallace turns to him, and there they are, face-to-face, nose-to-nose. He can see the array of whiskers in Roman’s beard, the subtle gradient of reds. The smooth surface of his cheeks. He is, up close, almost innocent. Roman’s nostrils flare just suddenly, and Wallace is transfixed by the play of light in his eyes. There’s mischief and something else. Wallace remembers, with a shiver, just moments before, the wet flick of Roman’s tongue against his ear.
“What game is this?” he asks Roman.
“No game,” he says. Then, to Emma, “How is Thom?” Emma flinches, takes a long drink from her coffee. She’s sobering up.
“He’s lovely. Writing that essay on Tolstoy, you know.” The tree’s limbs are moving again, wind in the leaves. Wallace looks up, the flash of a white stomach, a bird overhead, darting away, first low and then high, and over the fence.
“Tolstoy? I prefer Zola,” Roman says, smiling.
Emma nods tightly. She’s drinking from a Packers mug. Miller glances back. Their eyes meet, and Wallace looks away. Roman is watching him.
“Fascinating,” Roman says.
“Get your eyes checked,” Wallace says with far more cool than he deserves.
“The better to see you with,” Roman says, smiling broadly.
“Excuse me,” he says. “Emma, hey, I have to get up.”
“Why?” Emma asks, now that she’s settled in and gotten comfortable.
“Bathroom,” he says gently, as gently as he can. And he slides away and pushes himself up. Roman is still watching him as he climbs the back steps and enters the house. He can feel the weight of his gaze, the pressure of it.
Wallace manages to make it to the bathroom, where he vomits. All of the food from dinner comes up. It’s a mess in the bowl. His stomach heaves until he feels hot and flushed again. His head is on fire, and every breath makes another part of him ache. He hates Roman. He hates him so much he could kill him with his bare hands.
* * *
• • •
HE’S SITTING ON THE EDGE of the tub, sucking on an ice cube he scooped from the metal bowl in the kitchen, when he hears a gentle tap at the door. He assumes it’s Emma, so he doesn’t say anything. She’ll either get the hint or come in. He circles the ice around his lips and on his tongue. He’s trying to get himself to cool off. There is another tap, more insistent this time, and then Miller’s voice: “Wallace, you still in there?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, do you need it?” he asks.
Miller opens the door and comes in. He sits on the toilet lid. “What happened out there? I looked up and you were gone.”
“Nothing, just feeling kind of funny, so I came in.”
Miller puts a hand to his head and frowns. “Are you sick? Do you have a fever?”
“No. On both counts.”
“You feel warm, though.”
“It’s summer,” Wallace says. He sucks on the ice cube, and Miller watches intently.
“Do you want to lie down? It’s cooler in my room. I have a fan going.”
The thought of being apart from the rest of them, being alone in a cool, dark place, sounds perfect.
“Yes,” he says, and Miller rests a hand at the base of his neck.
“Okay,” Miller says. “Let’s go.”
They go up the stairs, in the dark house, and they take a left at the top. Miller’s room is long and angular. There is a circular window through which he can see the lakeshore at some great distance. There are maps and postcards on the walls, and books in a cramped case under the windowsill, where there are pillows and a thick flannel blanket. The bed is large and comfortable, with a big quilt. The room smells like Miller—oranges and salt. His bike is propped against the closet. The floor creaks under their feet.
“Here you go,” he says, pointing to the bed. This room is much cooler. There is a fan in the other window, drawing the air in. He goes to turn on a light, but Wallace shakes his head.
“No, that’s fine. Please leave it.”
Wallace climbs onto the bed and lies on his back, staring at the ceiling, which seems too low for Miller.
“Do you want me go?”
“You would miss the party,” Wallace says.
“I want to stay.”
“What about the ice girl?”
“Ice girl?”
“You know—she was chipping ice earlier. She came for you. You shouldn’t disappoint her.”
“Zoe, you mean? Oh, she’s fine.”
“She thought you were funny. I saw.”
Miller is standing at the door with it closed, playing with the noisy little knob. “I don’t know what you want me to say about that.”
“Nothing,” Wallace says. This fight is already taking what little energy he has left. He puts Miller’s pillow over his face. It smells so good, so like him.
“I want to stay.”
“Then stay. It’s your house.”
Miller gets into the bed next to him and lies on his side. He puts a hand on Wallace’s stomach, which makes Wallace insecure. He wants to push Miller’s hand away from him, to be alone, to be perfectly alone. Miller comes closer, rests his face in the crook of Wallace’s shoulder. He throws a leg over Wallace’s leg. Like when they were in Wallace’s bed.
“Someone could come up here,” Wallace says.
“I know.”
“You didn’t want people finding out.”
“What’s to find out? Yngve and Lukas do this all the time.”
“But we aren’t them. We weren’t like this before.”
“How were we like?”
“I don’t know, meaner? You picked on me a lot.”
“I didn’t. You picked on me. You were always scowling in the hallways. I thought you hated me for a long time.”
“How could anyone hate you?” Wallace asks. “You’re so likable.”
“I try to be.”
Outside, someone’s car is having a hard time getting going. And someone else’s children are running in the street. These are the last days of summer, the last days when day will be longer than night. It seems like such a waste to spend it inside with someone who is maybe sick, maybe not.
“You’re going to miss the party,” Wallace says.
“I don’t mind. It’s over, anyway.” Miller’s voice is warm on his skin, and Wallace relents. It would be too much to give it up, to be alone in the dark, now that he has been with Miller in the dark. What he fears, though, and it’s a cold, grinding, glittering fear rising
in him, is that now he’ll never be able to face the dark alone again. That he’ll always want this, seek this, once it’s lost to him.
Miller is rubbing his stomach in a gesture that feels familial to some long-vanished part of himself. Wallace watches the edge of a white curtain flutter. Yngve is outside and below them, laughing.
“I think Roman suspects something. He said something strange,” Wallace says.
“Let him.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“No. Not as much as I thought it would.”
“Oh.”
“Does it bother you?” Miller says, and there’s so much tentative anticipation in his voice that Wallace wants to cry. “You said those things before. That you’d rather be alone.”
“I think I would rather be alone,” Wallace says at the edge of a long thought, “but it doesn’t bother me to be with you.”
“Good,” Miller says, laughing because he can’t help himself. “Good.”
“You are funny-looking though, so there’s that.”
“That’s true. You once said I looked like a small child put in a big man’s body.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, when we first met at the bonfire. You said it right to my face.”
“No wonder you thought I hated you.”
“No wonder.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I got that, later, but I got it.”
They turn to each other. It’s different from the time in Wallace’s apartment, from last night, when they turned to each other in desire, out of not knowing what else to do with themselves or their bodies, when the outcome seemed so uncertain. They turn to each other now of their own volition, and it’s so easy. Wallace puts his face against Miller’s chest, and Miller puts a hand on his thigh. They’re just lying there.
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