Free So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman Page B

time and gave him the most information. But it easily could have been engineering or literature or political science or what-the-fuck-ever. All he wanted now was to be who he was before he went to school. He could see flashes of it but had never been able to reconnect. Maybe now, with the baby, he could get there.
    Back before Harvard and Columbia and research, Gene was a brainy, hyper kid who listened to reggae and Captain Beefheart. He learned languages because they were fun. He read small-press classics, historical books on pirates, and manifestos from the Situationist International. He ordered self-produced albums with Magic Marker covers through the mail. He was not athletic, though he had always been strong and flexible. Never played team sports and had instead taught himself tightrope walking and unicycle riding. And yes, he had to admit that most of those pursuits were romantic in some way. But they were also practical.
    In grad school he spent summers at a trapeze camp teaching terrified kids to hold on, to let go, to hang by their knees, to fall. He would ride his bike back home after flying and hanging,listening to Joe Strummer or the Talking Heads on the Walkman and going over his lab work in his head. Constant knew all this—was there for it. Part of it, anyway.
    Gene was done with everything by twenty-six. And done all over again with his brief mistake in the corporate world by twenty-eight. He was very happy doing what he was doing now, could feel that it was right. His hands in dirt instead of washed and sealed inside of gloves. He could not believe Con would even bring this up. These things that had driven him up here on the roof, starving for something he’d planted himself.
    He looked at Constant’s face, looked into his eyes, and watched his friend drop the subject, watched him recognize that thing they both used to feel, a separateness, a lack of faith that had once drawn them all together, a knowledge that certain Americans could be made to live longer—but making Americans as a group healthy was laughable in the current economy, with the current labor and environmental laws. They’d had this unspoken pact not to be hypocrites, not to busy themselves, in their fancy suits with their prohibitively expensive educations, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic . It hurt his gut to think Con was taking a pharma job and was still a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility; that he wouldn’t be doing Doctors Without Borders with Michelle, even though he easily could, that he had been so unnerved by the news of a baby. He saw disappointment in Con’s eyes and wondered if his friend was simply mirroring his own expression.
    “I just can’t do it, Connie,” he said tightly.
    Con nodded, looked somewhere beyond Gene’s shoulder. Finally, he said, “Can I borrow the sweater?” Gene took it off and he put it on, buttoning it up over his bare chest. He walked forward and pulled Gene up from where he sat. Then he hugged him close for several minutes. “You’re going to be a dad, my brother.” Gene smiled at the thought of it, relaxed, and embraced his friend, pounded his back before letting go.
    “Hey, I gotta go buy coffee and milk. Since we don’t have a cow yet.” Con laughed, reached in the pocket of the big sweater, and pulled out Gene’s rolling papers and some Drum, began rolling a cigarette.
    “Soon, maybe,” Gene said. “That’d be fucking great! Come up to the roof and milk it every morning.” They laughed. Con smiled at him, spat out some loose tobacco, then lit his cigarette. They walked to the stairs and headed down through the building to Seventh Street.
    “Did I tell you I got an uncle that used to farm?” Constant asked him.
    “The one with the metal forehead?”
    “Yeah.” Con laughed. “Obviously I have told you.”
    “You’d think the magnets would be bad for him.”
    “He only really does it when he’s drunk.”
    “Which is like . . . daily?”
    “P-T-S