The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle Page A

office in a running pantomime of quick, jerky movements, up from his desk and back again, a glance into one of the Schmitt boxes, then the files, a cursory check of a two-years’-dormant gall that had suddenly begun to hatch out and then a shout from the microscope—“A new genus, here, Milk, I believe, a new genus altogether!” When I’d first come in he gave me half a moment to settle myself and then, with a grin, he laid a compact folder on my desk. “Eighteen histories,” he said, showing his teeth. “And thirty-six more promised. I was up till two in the morning just to record them.”
    â€œWonderful news,” I said, sharing the grin with him.
    â€œAny difficulties while I was away?”
    I fought to keep my face straight.
Don’t shift your eyes,
I told myself,
don’t.
“No,” I said, shifting my eyes, “no, everything was fine.”
    He was looking at me curiously. I opened the folder in the hope of distracting him, but it didn’t work. Actually, I don’t think there was ever a person born on this earth more attuned to the nuances of human behavior than Prok, no one more sensitive to facial expression and what we’ve come to call body language—he was a bloodhound of the emotions, and he never missed a thing. “Everything?” he prodded.
    I wanted to confess in that moment, but I didn’t. I murmured somethingin the affirmative, and, further to distract him, said, “Do you want me to transcribe these right away?”
    He seemed absent, and didn’t answer immediately. He was always young-looking for his age—in those days people routinely took him for five to ten years younger than he actually was—but I saw the lines in his face then, the first faint tracings of the finished composition he would take to his grave with him. But he must be exhausted, I thought, pushing himself to collect his histories, driving all that way in his rattling old Nash, up late, up early, nobody to help him. “You know,” he said after a moment, and it was almost as if he were reading my mind, “I’ve been thinking how convenient it would be—how essential—for me to train another interviewer, someone I could trust to collect the data along with me, a person who might not necessarily have any scientific training but who could immerse himself in the technique I’ve developed and apply it rigorously. A quick study, John. Somebody like you.” A pause. “What do you say?”
    I was so taken by surprise—and so consumed with guilt over my invasion of the files—that I fumbled this one badly. “I—well, of course,” I began. “Well, certainly, you know, I would—and I
do
have to graduate yet …”
    â€œEnglish,” he said, and the noun came off his tongue like something distasteful, something chewed over and spat out again. “I never quite understood the application of that—as a field, that is.”
    â€œI don’t know.” I shrugged. He was watching me still, watching me with a preternatural intentness. “I thought I might like to maybe teach. Someday, I mean.”
    He sighed. For all his qualities, patience wasn’t one of them. Nor did he take disappointment well. “Just think about it, John, that’s all I ask. No need to decide right this minute—let’s talk over dinner, and we are expecting you tonight, six sharp, that is, unless you have other plans?”
    â€œSex research? Are you nuts?”
    Paul was stretched across his bed as if he’d been washed up there by a tide just recently receded. He was chewing gum and idly bouncing atennis ball up off the racquet propped on his chest. Half a dozen books were scattered across the floor, face-down, another kind of flotsam. I didn’t feel like explaining it to him—he wouldn’t have understood anyway.
    â€œAt least it’s a job,” I said, pulling the