Real Life

by Brandon Taylor

  “Okay. I’m glad.”

  Wallace turns to him, and they kiss again, more deeply this time. When Miller moves inside him, Wallace closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to see Miller looking at him. He does not trust himself with this uncertain feeling gaining momentum. Miller asks him to roll onto his stomach, and Wallace does, and he’s relieved not to have to close his eyes so tight. Miller kisses his shoulders, his back. It’s tender. But it’s still fucking, and it still hurts, which, in this moment, is a blessing because it gives Wallace something to feel anchored in. When Miller finishes, he goes across the hall and comes back with a warm towel. Wallace cleans himself, but Miller looks away from him shyly, still unable to face the necessary discomfort of fucking a man. Wallace laughs, and Miller looks up sharply.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” Wallace says, and gets back under the quilt. “I was just laughing.”

  “At me?”

  “No, at myself, I guess. It’s funny. I didn’t have sex for a long time, and now it’s just a thing.”

  “Was it good?”

  “Yes,” Wallace says. “It was fine.”

  “Fine,” Miller says, narrowing his eyes. Wallace kisses him.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” he says. “Don’t think so much.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?” Wallace asks, and Miller looks down at him meaningfully. “Oh, it’s fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Wallace says, and it is fine because he doesn’t think he could get hard even if he wanted to. It isn’t anything to do with Miller or not wanting him, he realizes. But he feels disconnected now, suddenly, from the part of him that is necessary for fucking or coming. “I’m tired.”

  “Me too,” Miller says.

  They lie there for a long time, just breathing next to each other. It is like the night before, Wallace thinks. Except now they are in Miller’s bed instead of Wallace’s, except now they’re in this part of town rather than downtown, except for all the rest of it; it’s like the night before except somehow shifted, the world at angles to itself, an oblique reflection across some strange line of symmetry. Wallace feels a childish sense of glee at this revelation, a small bit of happiness at having discerned it. But there is no place to tell it, nowhere he can set it down and present it to Miller.

  When Miller falls asleep, Wallace pulls his arms apart and slides from the bed. He puts on his clothes as quietly as he can. He moves about the dark room, collecting his shoes and his shirt and his sweater. It’s cold, and the world outside is gray with coming morning. When he is dressed, he slips into the dark hall and down the stairs. He leaves the bowl he brought. It’s not worth it. And he goes out onto the street, making sure the door is shut firmly behind him.

  It’s getting to be four or five now. There are a couple of cars. The sky is lightening. Wallace stomps in his shoes and wraps his arms around himself. The street slopes upward. There are the familiar houses, their identical facades in minor variations, cream and hunter green and navy blue. Their doors shut firmly. Here and there a porch with wooden furniture on it, or a couch with ugly upholstery. Scraggly city grass. The odd tree. Cars parked neatly against the sides of houses. Up the street he goes, his steps echoing softly. The air is cool and damp. He’s sore and feels like he’s all scratched up inside. Ahead of him the top of the capitol is visible, beyond it the gray bulk of the lake. He’s almost home.

  Did Miller really almost kill someone? Bring his cracking bones down on someone because he didn’t know what to do with himself? Anger could be like that, moving from person to person like an illness or a plague. The way Wallace himself was cruel at dinner, lobbing that grenade at Vincent because of what had been said to him. Or the way that telling Miller about Alabama prompted Miller to tell him about Indiana, the two of them passing cruelty back and forth like a joint. Perhaps friendship is really nothing but controlled cruelty. Maybe that’s all they’re doing, lacerating each other and expecting kindness back. Or maybe it’s just Wallace, lacking friends, lacking an understanding of how friendship works.

  But he understands cruelty. He understands violence, even if friendship is beyond him. Just as he can feel the coming weather, he can discern from shifting tides the shape of violence on the horizon. It is his native element, his mother tongue—he knows how people can maim each other. He sensed it in the bed with Miller, drifting off to sleep—that if he stayed, something terrible would happen. Perhaps not in that moment, or even the next day. But soon enough something awful was coming their way. Why stay, then? Why, if he could feel it in the ache of his belly, in the pressure collecting behind his eyes?

  Wallace reaches the top of the hill, where the street flattens out and becomes a side street adjoining the capitol. There are cafés and bakeries here, though they are not open. He walks briskly past a little patio, where people sleep in soggy blankets on painted benches. The scent of urine and old food rotting hangs in the air. How easily he might have become one of them; how simple it would have been for him to be homeless here, or down in Alabama. This too is a kind of life, a way in which things can go wrong for a person.

  When Wallace finally reaches his apartment, he realizes he has left his phone at Miller’s house. This is a complication, but not a serious one. Tomorrow is Monday. He will see Miller in the biosciences building where they work. He will ask him to bring the phone on Tuesday or another day—a simple favor, just two friends helping each other. Clean, efficient, nothing like the prying open of one’s life, the splitting of the past like an egg.

  Wallace runs a hot bath and climbs into his tub, which is deep and white. He can barely stand the heat of the water, which is blue and up to his chest in the tub. The bathroom is quiet and too bright. If he were not afraid to sit in the tub in the dark, he would turn out the lights, but that might cause him to fall asleep, and he would not like that, to drown in his tub alone. Who would find him? A neighbor? His landlord? When the scent of his rotting body made its way outside and down the hall? When someone complained? Or would Miller come for him?

  Wallace presses his knees together. The water ripples. He sinks lower into its scalding heat. He’s turning the color of clay, his skin reddening, stinging as if burning from the water. He soaps himself up and then rinses himself clear, and the water is gray with soap and dead skin and filth. He still smells like smoke, from the fire, and perhaps from Miller’s story of the time when he, smoking, punched a boy until he bled. Wallace dunks his face in the water, clears the smoke from his eyes. Slides deeper, until the water is level with his chin. His legs are floating. He would drown in an instant.

  * * *

  • • •

  SOMETIME AROUND MIDMORNING, Wallace is awakened by a persistent knocking on his door. He pulls himself out of bed, where he has been drowsing on and off for hours. He is wearing a green sweater and blue cotton shorts. The apartment is blisteringly bright even with the shades drawn. Wallace opens the door and there is Miller, standing in front of him, his hair wet from the shower, his skin scrubbed and red and fresh. There is something raw about him.

  “You left,” he says. “You left. After all that shit I said, you left.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to be a hassle.”

  “Even after I said you weren’t, even after I said I wanted you to stay. You left. You left, Wallace.”

  Wallace is already tired. Are they going to chase after each other this way? Across town, from bed to bed? He rests against the door. Miller holds out his phone.

  “You left this behind.”

  “Thank you. I was going to ask you for it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Miller asks. There is hurt in his voice, and annoyance. Wallace sighs.

  “When I saw you at work. It’s not a problem. You didn’t have to bring it.”

  “You left,” Miller repeats. He’s wearing some sor
t of cropped top beneath a cardigan. Gym clothes. His stomach is clenching and releasing. He’s out of breath. Sweat on his skin. He ran all the way here, Wallace realizes. Something in him softens.

  “Do you want to come in?”

  Miller kisses him hard on the mouth, takes two steps forward, shuts the door behind him. His mouth tastes fresh like toothpaste, of course. His lips are warm and close, insistent. Wallace lets himself be kissed and pressed to the wall. They knock the broom over with a loud clack on the floor.

  “I didn’t know if you’d even want to talk to me again,” Miller says. “When did that become so important to me? I don’t know.”

  Wallace wants to laugh at that, or feel insulted by it, but he can’t. Miller is so earnest, so sincere in his doubt that to make fun of it would be ugly. Instead, he gingerly extricates himself from Miller. He takes a seat on the couch near the window, and folds his legs under himself. Miller begins to fuss with the bar stool, shifting it around.

  “Well, thank you for bringing my phone,” he says. “I appreciate it.”

  “We’re having brunch,” Miller says quickly. “Some of us, I mean. You’re welcome to join.”

  Wallace is already on his way to rejecting the offer when Miller says, “I’d like it if you came.”

  Small favors, Wallace thinks. Small, clearly defined favors. He wets his lips.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Good,” Miller says. “Good.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY GO TO BRUNCH TOGETHER. It’s one of the places on the square, where there is seating outdoors behind green partitions. They sit at a broad table, just the two of them at first. Miller kneads Wallace’s knee anxiously under the table. Wallace stares down into his coffee. The world is too bright, too saturated. He would prefer to sleep, to be asleep. The traffic on the square is slow. Families on tours of the capitol, their thick Midwestern accents sailing through the air. Farther away he hears shards of music, buskers warming up for the day. The sun is hot on his neck. His sweater has a duck on it.

  Soon, their friends appear. Miller’s hand drops from his knee. Lukas and Yngve and Thom and Cole and Vincent and Emma. They move to one of the long tables. Wallace can still smell the booze on their skin. They are all wearing dark shades. Cole and Vincent are holding hands on top of the table. Things must have put themselves back together over there. Wallace is relieved. Emma puts her head on his shoulder. Vincent’s shades reflect Wallace’s gaze.

  “I’m starving,” Yngve says. “Lukas, what are you getting?”

  “Crêpes, I think,” Lukas says, studying the menu carefully. He is fastidious in pronouncing the word, as he often is with such things. Cole kisses Vincent’s cheek and then his hair. Vincent is staring through Wallace. Or rather, the surface of Vincent’s sunglasses is pointed in Wallace’s general direction. Where the eyes beneath are pointed is a mystery. The waiter brings their drinks. Cappuccino for Emma, double espresso for Thom, mimosas for Cole and Vincent, who are clearly feeling celebratory, and refills of plain coffee for Lukas and Yngve. Miller isn’t drinking. His cardigan has a hole in the shoulder.

  They all end up ordering crêpes, as if unable to resist the power of suggestion. Wallace isn’t hungry, but orders anyway.

  “So I hear I missed a crazy party last night,” Thom says. “What happened?” His eyes are gleaming. He spent the night reading Tolstoy, he says, assembling an argument about some obscure text. Wallace would rather talk about that than the party, anything other than the party.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Cole says, smiling. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Yeah,” Vincent says, but there is no smile on his face or in his voice. He looks out into the street. Wallace drinks from his coffee.

  “That’s not what I heard,” Thom says, grinning. He bumps against the table, rocking it slightly. “I heard it was a shitshow.”

  “It wasn’t that serious,” Lukas says. “Yngve, sugar?” Lukas hands Yngve several sugar packets. Yngve takes them, tears them open, and dumps the contents into his cup. Thom is starting to look a little defeated by this. He turns to Emma.

  “Babe? I thought you said it was crazy.”

  Emma lifts her head from Wallace’s shoulder and shrugs. “It’s not really worth rehashing. I told you.” Things have not quite put themselves back together between these two, Wallace notes.

  Thom has made a critical miscalculation, assuming that whatever Emma alluded to had been something the others would feel comfortable discussing. He probably thought she was talking about someone getting too drunk or saying something slightly off-color or starting some sort of silly contest. He did not assume that the craziness Emma mentioned had been anything worse. Thom’s shoulders slump, and Wallace feels pity for him. It’s always this way. He’s always on the outside of things. But then Wallace remembers that Emma and Thom are fighting and his pity shrinks, recedes. He has his own shit, after all.

  “I can’t believe the weekend is over,” Cole says. “Can you guys?”

  “No,” Lukas says. “I have to go to lab today and get things ready for tomorrow. It’s going to be a long week.”

  “Same,” Yngve says, nodding. “Protein preps.”

  “Genomic shearing.”

  “The worst,” Emma says, lolling back against Wallace’s shoulder.

  “I just have to passage my cells,” Cole says. “It’s . . . well, you know.”

  “Is that light-sensitive?”

  “Yep,” Cole says. “And I have to do it in the cold room. For hours.”

  “Better pack a parka,” Lukas says.

  “How long are you working?” Vincent asks, and Cole turns to him with a look of apology already forming.

  “Oh, babe. Not that long. Probably till five.”

  Vincent’s lips stretch into a thin line. Wallace does not need to see his eyes to know that they are filled with disappointment, that whatever fragile truce they’ve formed is already in danger of rupturing. Wallace wants to kick Cole under the table, to pay attention, but it isn’t his place. The sun is high overhead now. Their food comes out, all crispy and brown and soft. Wallace’s crêpes are plain, with just powdered sugar and strawberries on the side. The tartness of the berries and the sweetness of the sugar are nice, soothing something in him. He chews evenly, slowly, eyes on his own plate. He dissects his food with a careful hand into edible segments. It’s the only way to keep it down.

  Miller watches him from across the table. Yngve and Lukas are talking, fighting quietly.

  “You didn’t say you weren’t coming back,” Yngve says. “You said you were going to take Nathan home and come back.”

  “I was tired, Yngve. Besides, what happened to Enid? Wasn’t she supposed to stay over?”

  “She had to take Zoe home.”

  “Well, that was nice of her.”

  “You didn’t answer my texts.”

  “I was asleep.”

  “Fine.”

  “All right.”

  “I didn’t know you weren’t coming home, that’s all. I waited up. Miller and I used your vape.”

  Lukas shrugs, and Miller laughs to diffuse the tension. Yngve and Lukas are never really fighting. It’s just scratching the surface. Lukas’s hair is bright in the summer sun, and he’s so freckled that he looks tan. He is coppery all over. Miller nudges Lukas with his elbow.

  “You’re quiet,” Emma says to Wallace, which startles him.

  “Oh, just eating,” he says.

  “Are you all right?”

  “M-hm.” He gives her a smile, but she sees right through it. She puts her hand on his leg.

  “Are you?” she asks again, and her voice lowers so that only he can hear her. What is he supposed to say to that? That he is fine but not, here but not, wishing he were in his apartment?

  “I’m just tired,” he says.
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  “When did you go home?” Vincent asks him, and from the directness of his gaze, even through the sunglasses, Wallace knows he’s been caught out for something.

  “This morning,” he says before he can think of something else. “I walked home.”

  “Yeah, because we were all outside, and you just vanished,” Vincent says. “Which is funny, considering how all of . . . last night happened because of you.”

  Wallace licks the sugar from the corner of his mouth and takes a steadying breath. “Was that because of me? I thought it had something to do with you and Cole.”

  “Oh, no, it was you, Wallace.”

  “Vincent,” Cole says.

  “You opened your big mouth and then you decided—hell, I don’t know what you decided, but suddenly, you’re gone. Why is that, Wallace?”

  “I wasn’t trying to start anything,” Wallace says. “I’m sorry it happened the way it did, but I wasn’t trying to start anything.”

  “But weren’t you?” Vincent’s voice stabs through him. “Weren’t you trying to start something because you’re miserable? Because you’re angry? Because you don’t know what you want? Isn’t that it?”

  “No,” Wallace says, but it’s a small sound.

  “I think you need to mind your own business, Wallace. You’re going to ruin someone’s life one day.”

  “That’s not fair,” Miller says. “Don’t do that.”

  “Why, Miller? He intruded where he wasn’t wanted.”

  “Babe,” Cole says. His face is flushed. He is giving Wallace a look of apology, but Wallace only shakes his head. He has this coming, after all. He’s got it all coming.

  “It’s not fair to blame Wallace. We’re friends. We sometimes fuck up, but come on,” Yngve says.

  “It’s all right, Yngve. I don’t mind,” Wallace says, shrugging. “Vincent is obviously very angry at me. It’s fine.”

  “It’s fine,” Vincent says. “You know, Wallace, just because you don’t have someone doesn’t mean that the rest of us also have to suffer.”