Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,32
ring was part of it. They stopped when I walked by and moved back in with the party. Did you see that slutty dress Tess Gilman had on?”
“Huh? No.”
“I’ll bet. A see-through blouse with her figure! You could see where her body stocking had padded inserts. And all you men ogling her like she was Raquel or somebody.”
“Gwen, I’m trying to listen to the news.”
Her face tightened. “Screw the news! You spend all day between the hospital and your damn lab, and when you do get home in time to talk, all you do is tell me about the hospital, tell me about your research. Damn it, you might at least try to pay a little attention to me over the breakfast table!”
“Sweetheart, they’re talking about Senator Hollister. He had a CVA last night and died. Forgive me if I find the death of the front-running liberal candidate for the next presidential election of somewhat greater interest than your rehash of the highlights of another boring cocktail party!”
“Well I’m sorry if you find spending an evening with your wife boring!” she returned hotly.
The news moved on to the latest catastrophe in Pakistan. “Gwen, honey, that wasn’t what I meant.”
“Well, goddamn it, Geoff! You don’t have to brush off everything I say. I put up with that miserable last year of Harvard, and then your internship in that filthy city—gone all the time, and home every other night just to sleep. Then that endless residency period, when everything was supposed to get better and you’d have more free time—but you didn’t, because you were doing work on your own in that lab. And Jesus, that miserable stay in the heartland of coal mines and grits while you played the medical missionary! And all this was supposed to lead up to when you could be the big man in the big medical complex, and name your own hours, and pay some attention to me for a change. Remember me? I’m your wife! Would you like to stuff me away with some of those damn virus cultures you’re forever playing with?”
I’ve heard this before, thought Geoff, knowing that he would hear it again. And she wasn’t being all that unfair, he also realized. But he was running late, and this lingering hangover left him in no mood to talk things out again.
“Honey, it happens that I’m at a crucial stage right now, and I really have to keep at it,” he offered by way of reconciliation. “Besides, we went to the cocktail party at Trelane’s last night, didn’t we? We were together then, weren’t we?”
“Big deal,” Gwen sniffled. “It was a lousy party. All you talked about was medicine.”
Geoff sighed and glanced at his watch. “Look, I don’t want to make this sound too dramatic, but what I’m working on now could be big—I mean big. How big it might be I haven’t even told my colleagues—I don’t want to look like a fool if it doesn’t work out. But, honey, I think it is going to work out, and if it does, I’ll have made a breakthrough like no one since... Well, it will be a breakthrough.”
“Swell! You mean you’ll have discovered a whole new way to implant zits on a monkey’s navel, or some other thrilling discovery that all the journals can argue about!” Gwen was not to be placated.
Giving it up, Geoff bent to kiss her. She turned her face, and he got a mouthful of brown curls. “Baby, it really could be big. If it is, well, things could get a whole lot different for us in a hurry.”
“I’ll take any change—the sooner the better,” she murmured, raising her chin a little.
“Trust me, sweetheart. Hey look, you were fussing about your party dress last night. Why don’t you go out today and pick out a new one—something nice, whatever you like. OK?”
“What news today?”
Geoff glanced up from his stack of electron photomicrographs. “Oh, hi, Dave.” And to atone for the trace of irritation in his voice, he added, “Have a cup of coffee?”
“Muchos grassy-ass,” his visitor replied, turning to the large coffee urn Geoff had inveigled for his lab. He spooned in half a cupful of sugar and powdered cream substitute, and raised the steaming container immediately to his lips—one of those whose mouths seem impervious to scalding temperatures.
“Don’t know why it is, but even when you brew your own, it ends up tasting rancid like all other hospital coffee,” Geoff commented, half covering his pile of photographs.