Paul stares down into his glass. He swirls the ice. “And then I got fired. The man’s blood was literally on my hands, and he fired me.” Paul’s voice softens. “At least he’s not going to press charges. He said he wanted to be the bigger man.”
Mark frowns and works through a series of mental calculations. Paul’s pay at the clinic was middling. Peanuts, really. Particularly when Mark compared it to the ludicrous raise he demanded from the university, and received, once he’d snagged the Myrdal award. If anything, what Paul brought back from the clinic afforded them cash for booze, and pretty shitty booze, at that. But there were other risks at play. The biweekly paycheck provided Paul with a sense of worth, however small, which was crucial to his own delicate process of self-actualization. A process that Mark has been gently guiding for the duration of their relationship.
He frowns harder: he wonders if a pint-sized mannequin has derailed his efforts. He needs to work on Paul’s temper.
“You’re disappointed in me,” Paul says.
“What? That’s crazy.” Mark wraps an arm around him. “Goulding was an asshole.” He pulls Paul closer. “If this hadn’t happened, I was planning on telling you to quit, anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. That place was a madhouse.”
He strokes Paul’s shoulder until he feels it relax, and then he stops.
He loosens his tie.
“And look at it this way—now you won’t have to beg for time to go to the wedding.”
Paul drains the rest of the whiskey. He says, “I know that you think I should go, and I already told you that I’m going to. You win, okay? Christ, I called Donna this afternoon for the first time in two and a half years to tell her as much.”
Mark feels the tug of victory, but he resists a smile. A reindeer wanders away from the herd toward a craggy precipice. The Sami approach it gently, calmly. A dead buck means three less calves come spring.
He rubs Paul’s leg. “I’m sorry, kid. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I know you’re stressed.”
“It’s fine. And it was nice of you to offer to come along with me, though I wouldn’t wish this wedding on my worst enemy.” Paul buries his face in his hands, and Mark prays that he doesn’t start crying, though he knows that awkward moment is inevitable.
“God, I’m such a mess.”
Tears rage against the floodgates, threatening to burst them open. Mark grabs Paul’s head and buries it against his chest. He looks past the errant wisps of blond hair toward the framed Munch print that hangs on the opposite wall. He wonders if it’s crooked.
“Hey,” he says. “Hey. Knock that off, all right? You’re not a mess. At all.”
Paul’s tears form damp patches on Mark’s shirt, and his nose runs against his tie. Mark does his best to ignore his irritation over an unscheduled trip to the dry cleaner. The painting’s definitely crooked.
“And you’re doing the right thing. Going to Eloise’s wedding. That’s the right thing to do, and I’m happy to do it with you.” He adds, “In fact, I’ll start looking into tickets tomorrow.”
*
Mark scrolls through the new messages in his inbox: Facilities will be closing early for the Fourth of July holiday. Non-tenure-track faculty members are demanding representation in university governance. Next week a visiting economist from Princeton will be giving a lecture on “inequality and stagnation” titled “The Greater Depression.” Amanda Lyons, one of the students in Mark’s summer-term Behavioral Economics survey course, wants to meet with him at eleven thirty about an essay that’s due next Wednesday. He checks the clock next to his computer: eleven ten. He fires off a reply saying that he’s happy to meet and banks on the hope that she won’t check her e-mail in the next twenty minutes.
He scrolls through the inbox a second time to make sure he hasn’t missed anything, and his frustration develops a dull, blunted edge. Not a single word from London.
Mark drums his fingers on the arm of his chair, then pushes back from the desk to admire his office. The books are what he looks at first: all hardcover first editions, alphabetized by author, and divided evenly among the room’s three teak cases. In the space between them hang his diplomas—the first recording his bachelor’s in philosophy from Amherst; the second his Ph.D. from Columbia. They are displayed in matching Pottery Barn frames that cost $69.99 each. He knows this because, when Paul presented the framed diplomas to him as a sort of congratulatory gift for his appointment at Penn, he googled the price. Back then he’d done so because he was sensitive to how much money Paul had spent on him; he knew that Paul had moved to Philadelphia because of him, and he’d feel awful if his boyfriend had gone broke over a set of frames on his account. Mark was heartened by the gift. He’d still felt like an unqualified impostor in academe—and the little conscious gestures that Paul made to acknowledge his worth helped him feel like he belonged. Like he deserved to be there.
Now he thinks they look tacky, hanging there. The sort of self-conscious accoutrement you’d expect to find in a dentist’s office, right next to a smiling, plush-toy tooth. He knows he can’t take them down. Not yet, at least. Now that Paul’s unemployed, he’s liable to swing by at any moment, and if he were to see the diplomas off the wall—stacked in a corner, say—he’d be crestfallen. He’d get all wounded and teary eyed, like one of Mark’s students whom he’s just smacked with a D. So, he’ll keep them up. For another year he’ll let them hang there, gathering dust. Then, once Paul has forgotten about them—once some other minimal crisis has taken hold of his thoughts—Mark will quietly replace them with something else. A Gustaf Fjaestad print, maybe. Or a smartly framed ?yvind Fahlstr?m. Lately, he’s been really into Fahlstr?m.