The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle Page B

sweater up over my head as carefully as I could so as not to disarrange my hair. I was changing for the Kinseys (they didn’t stand on ceremony, as Mac had said—behind closed doors they were even what might have been considered bohemian—but I felt that a dinner invitation, no matter how frequent or informal, required a jacket and tie, and I still feel that way).
    Paul let the ball dribble off the racquet and fall to the floor, where it took three or four reduced hops and disappeared under my desk. “But the sort of questions he asks—it’s embarrassing. You’re not going to—?” he caught himself, then saw it in my face. “You are, aren’t you?”
    I was knotting my tie in the mirror, studying my eyes, the way the hair clung slick to the sides of my head. “You didn’t seem to have any objections at the time, if I recall—you said, in fact, that you found the experience unique. Wasn’t that the word you used, ‘unique’?”
    â€œLook, John, I might be all wet about this, but don’t you think it takes kind of an
unusual
sort of person to be poking into people’s dirty underwear all the time?”
    I gave him a look that projected from the mirror all the way across the room, and there he was, diminished on the bed, diminished and growing smaller by the moment. I didn’t say anything.
    â€œI wouldn’t want to call the professor an odd duck or a pervert or anything, but don’t you realize everyone’s going to think of you that way? And what about your mother? You think she’s going to approve—as a career choice, I mean?”
    â€œI’ve told you a thousand times,” I said, slipping into my jacket now, “it’s science, research, just like anything else. Like Lister discovering antiseptic or what’s his name with the mold on the bread. Why shouldn’t we know as much as we possibly can about everything the human animal does?” I was at the door now, on my way out, but I paused to give him his chance to reply.
    â€œThe human animal? You sound just like him, John, you realize that? That’s what he says. But what about human beings, made in the image of God? What about us? What about the soul?”
    I was irritated suddenly. “There is no God. And no soul either. You know what’s wrong with you?”
    He never moved from the bed, never even lifted his head. “No, but I guess you’re going to tell me.”
    â€œYou just have a narrow mind, that’s all,” I informed him, and I let the door punctuate the truth of it on my way out.
    Mrs. Lorber nodded to me from her post in the rocking chair and I gave her a strained smile in return, and then I was out in the street, the pussy willows at the corner in bloom, the tight pale buds firing on the trees, a warm breeze coming up out of the south freighted with the promise of the season to come. My eyes followed a trim dark girl as I crossed Atwater in front of the campus, her legs bare and thrilling as she receded down the avenue of trees, and I thought of Iris. I hadn’t seen her in over a month, since I’d stood her up, that is, and I felt bad about it—and, of course, the longer I put off facing her the worse it was.
    A car rolled slowly up the street, so slowly I thought the driver meant to pull up to the curb and park. He was an old man, his face drawn and anxious, and he gripped the wheel as if he were afraid someone was about to snatch it away from him. I watched him a moment, long enough to see a pair of bicyclists overtake him, and he never looked right or left or gave any sign he noticed them or anything else, and I found myself daydreaming about getting a car of my own someday and just taking off up over the hills and out of town until the road spooled out beneath me and I could be anywhere. Students drifted by in both directions. A pair of boxer dogs sat on their haunches and regarded me steadily