In his room, he sat on his bed and cast another glance at the papers on his dresser. Any buzz from his two beers was gone. It felt as if someone had driven a luxury car into the back of his head at high velocity and parked it there. He splayed his hand in front of his face and watched the fingers tremble. Willing them to stop did nothing.
In front of the bathroom mirror, he shook three more aspirin in his hand like dice, chewed them to pulp, stared again into his red-threaded eyes. He had class tomorrow, teaching a Primate Biomechanics class. He dropped another pair of aspirin in his palm, tossed them in. Pictured blood worn so thin that it jetted hose-like from a paper cut, spurting from a dozen minute perforations on his body.
Back in his room he crawled into bed and cracked open his laptop.
There were a pair of emails waiting for him. One from his sister with Dinner at Mom’s tomorrow in the subject line. The message just read Bring the wine Mom likes, a textbook example of the brusqueness that Brooke wielded like a club.
And then his heart rose from the depths of its thinned, overworked blood, did a lazy flip-flop in its cage when he saw the second message. It was from Mark Sandoval. The subject line simply said Interview.
Mr. Schutt,
Thanks for your interest in the Research Assistant position. From what I gather, you live in Portland? I’m impressed with your experience, particularly that you’ve studied with Don Whitmer. He and I go way back, actually. Great guy, hell of a teacher.
Any chance you’re available for an interview? Sooner rather than later? The position needs to be filled immediately. Maybe we could meet up in Don’s office?
Thanks,
Mark
•
The next day, after what turned out to be an astonishingly little amount of work—a few texts and a single explanatory phone call to Don Whitmer—Brian found himself introduced to Mark Sandoval in his mentor’s office. Brian walked in on legs sea-drunk with nervousness; he’d just plowed through his Primate Biomechanics class and the following discussion group, and it wasn’t until he was standing in the hallway outside Whitmer’s office that his legs truly took on that terrified thrum. Since that final text from Dr. Whitmer—Sure Bri you can meet him here—had come through earlier this morning, his headache had dissipated. It was just a pale ghost now, its fingers occasionally feathering his skull, trilling a little ache here and there, and thank God for that. Meanwhile, his guts roiled. He’d worn a tie. His only sport coat. Tucked his shirt into a pair of slacks that pinched his belly fat like a bully.
Dr. Whitmer earlier that month had begun Brian’s process of formally dropping out from the doctorate program. What he was doing wasn’t that odd—lots of PhD students dropped out, enough so that there was a common parlance for it. Brian was pulling an ADB—“All But Dissertation.” Whitmer, he knew, was trying hard not to take it personally. It left them in an odd kind of twilight regarding their relationship; Brian’s life at the school was winding down, but he had still TAed for Whitmer as a grad student, still graded his papers and taught his lesson plans. Brian still considered Whitmer his friend. He still looked forward to their discussions, their time together; he would miss the hell out of the warmth and wry, understated kindness of the old man.
He knocked and Whitmer through the door told him to come in.
The office was windowless and small with barely enough room for his desk, a dented filing cabinet, and a beautiful oak bookcase that spanned most of one wall and housed his books and a number of relics from his fieldwork. A pair of dark leather chairs faced his desk, their back rails cracked and worn. Anthropology was as fact-based as anything else, Whitmer was fond of saying, and thusly was couched resolutely in the three-armed embrace of theory, investigation, and review. But as a field of study? Anthro would never, ever be financially akin to, say, engineering or drug development. It would never bring in the same type of money for the school. Whitmer’s office was a clear reflection of that. It was the apex of the man’s career, this room, and it would be his death-boat, his Viking funeral: he would die here, in this office. Figuratively if not literally. This was his final destination, as good as it got for Don Whitmer, and why should Brian be so presumptuous to think that he’d fare differently, or even as well? The fact that Whitmer seemed perfectly content with his life served only to scare the living shit out of Brian.
The two men stood when he entered. Everyone shook hands. Whitmer’s hands were rough, calloused—the worn hands of decades of fieldwork, the hands of a man who still taught dig classes to kids at the Y twice a month. Well versed in chisel and brush and aching knees bent beneath a sun somewhere. Brian had always felt fiercely sentimental toward Don Whitmer, who was old as God, and who held a deep reserve of workmanship inside him that bordered on manic and belied his age and frame. On the Lake Holvamatn dig last year, the old man had transformed into an outright beast, running the excavation site until well past dark, oftentimes needing Brian or another student to remind him to eat and sleep. He’d be retiring within the next few years, and Brian felt as tender towards him as a grandparent. His face was leather-tan, seamed as a map, and today he badly needed to clean his glasses. Sandoval’s hands, meanwhile, were smooth, cool. Writer’s hands. Hands like his own.
Brian sat down in the vacant chair, the waistline of his slacks once more cutting painfully into his gut. He was sitting next to Mark Sandoval. He was sitting next to a purported alien abductee, a famed cryptozoologist, a New York Times bestselling author. It was a curious type of celebrity the man held, and a weird moment. Sandoval was wearing a gray calfskin jacket over an off-blue dress shirt, brown jeans and boots. Leaning back with his hands laced over his stomach, he managed to effortlessly convey, with his slightly disheveled haircut and going-gray stubble, exactly what he was: a fit, reasonably handsome multimillionaire just over the hillside of fifty. Given Sandoval’s tertiary proximity to the anthropology field—even if only as a punch line, someone to be derided by actual academics and scientists—and his status as a famous person, B-list or otherwise, Brian felt both mildly starstruck and a little annoyed at being starstruck.
“We were just catching up,” Whitmer said. “Mark was a student of mine back in Seattle.”
“Long time ago,” Sandoval said. He sounded almost boyish, certainly younger than he looked.
“Oh, indeed,” Whitmer said with a little chuckle.
“Wait a minute,” Brian said. His face brightened with sudden understanding. “Don, you’re not . . . Are you Morgan Freeman? In the movie?”
Whitmer nodded, a curious mixture of humility and—what was that? Contrition? Shame? “Guilty as charged,” he said.
Sandoval burst into laughter. “How often you get that question, Don?”