That’s when I began to relax—once I noticed the claw marks on the coffee table, the shredded arm of the sofa, the tiny nose prints on the inside of the kitchen window. And over the years, as we’ve grown closer, Nick has become one of the few constants in my life, someone who’s always here when I come home after months away.
Now I wander back into the kitchen, where Nick’s talking to Sydney. Her boyfriend isn’t around, and they don’t see me, and I feel, as I often do in these situations, that I’m not really a part of what’s happening but observing it from a distant place; I’m on the periphery, like something in the background of a photograph that never catches the untrained eye.
When the boyfriend returns, we say our good nights. Nick walks them both to the front door, his hand brushing against my back as he passes by.
I open the dishwasher and begin to run water over the glasses in the sink. A few minutes later, Nick is back, depositing empty beer bottles into the recycle bin in the corner.
“Leave it for the maid!” he says, pouring himself another glass of wine.
“I would, if you actually had a maid.”
He leans over to shut off the water, gently hip-butting me out of the way. I see that he’s used a rubber band to tie his hair—a thick, light-brown mop he never seems to know what to do with—into a little bob at the nape of his neck.
“Come here a second,” I say.
I stand behind him and begin to untangle the dirty rubber band from his hair, as gently as I can. He tilts his head back to help, and I feel the waver of his inebriated body trying hard to stand still. I pull my ponytail holder from my wrist and put it between my teeth, running my hands through his hair, smoothing it out. It’s a little damp from the rain outside, and it smells green, like a forest. I pull the hair back and tie it behind his head again. Then I turn him around to face me. “No more rubber bands,” I tell him. “They tear the shit out of your hair.”
“I’m thinking of cutting it, actually,” Nick says, running his hand along the back of his head.
“Don’t,” I say. “It looks good long.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” His hair, especially when it’s tousled, reminds me of Keller’s.
He looks as if he’s about to ask me something, but he doesn’t. Nick has a sweet face, like a Saint Bernard’s: calm, competent, a little somber. He’s tall and solidly built, and with his year-round suntan, from studying insects up and down the West Coast, he looks more like a rugby player than an entomologist.
As I sneak a couple of glasses into the dishwasher, I say, “That professor friend of yours, Sydney—what have you told her about me?”
“Nothing.”
“She said she’s heard a lot about me.”
“That’s what friends do,” he says. “We talk from time to time.”
“About what?”
“Why you never come to my parties. Despite the fact that I’m an excellent cook and you have nothing but dehydrated camping food in your house.”
“I’m here. Fashionably late, but here.”
“You know what I mean,” he says. “When would I ever see you, if I didn’t drag you over here for food and booze?”
“I’d bring the rent check by eventually.”
“Funny,” he says.
“Oh, you know I’m kidding.”
“Right. Because you pay by direct deposit.”
“It’s not that.”
“It is, though, isn’t it?” He props himself against the counter. “Don’t you ever go out?”
“Sure I do,” I say. “Just the other night, Jill and I went out to Sam Bond’s to grade quizzes.”
“Doing work at the local pub is still working,” he says.
“We had beer.”
“Unless you woke up in someone else’s bed with a raging hangover, it doesn’t count.”
“For the record,” I say, “I do have a social life. He just doesn’t live here. In Oregon, I mean.”
Nick raises his eyebrows. “I’m familiar with the concept of long-distance relationships,” he says, “but don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”
“You’re one to talk, Professor Kettle. I don’t recall seeing any single women at this party.”
“I thought you counted penguins for a living.”
“Your point?”
“You counted wrong.” He steps closer. “But then, she was the last one to arrive.”
I reach for a nearby wine bottle and refill my glass because I don’t know what to say.
“Remember what Freud said?” he asks. “You need two things in life—love and work. You know, as in a balance of the two?”
“Maybe I like being off-balance.”
He takes a step backward, still slouched against the counter, as if holding himself up. “I’m serious. When are you going to settle down? Join the real world?”
“Come on, Nick—you’re a scientist. Reality’s depressing.”
“I’m not talking about bugs and birds,” he says. “I’m trying to talk about the birds and bees.”
I smile and take a long drink of wine.
He leans forward. “Don’t you think you could ever be involved in a relationship that’s not quite so long distance?”
“Define long.”