Wade looked at her. He said, “Whatever. I’m going into business. You get the money, then you can do whatever else you want.”
“What kind of business?” Stephanie said
“I don’t know. What you got?” He laughed. “I think I’d like to buy some property. How hard could it be? You’ve seen some of the guys who run Oakpine?”
Larry felt Stephanie’s leg shift against his leg, the warmth. “Are you going to study science?” Wendy asked Stephanie. “Is it medicine?”
“I think so. I’d like to do research.”
Larry offered everyone the dish of hot mustard. “You were in Denver last summer at the hospital?” Larry said.
“Yeah.” She turned to him now, closer, and put her arm along the back of his chair. “It was an internship, and I was in a lab where they were working on different kinds of diabetes. I liked it very much.” She held on to Larry’s forearm while they picked at the platters of sweet-and-sour chicken and wontons with chopsticks.
“Did you experiment on rats?”
“They have white mice in the lab, but I didn’t work with them.”
“You’d look good in a lab coat, doctor,” Wade said. He downed his drink. He poured another lick into the cup and put his arm around Wendy’s chair. “And we’re going to be in business and then travel.”
“I’ll take some of that,” Larry said.
“Good man,” Wade said, handing him the bottle along the side of their crowded table. Larry took it and put it in his pocket. “Hey,” Wade said.
“Where will you two travel?” Larry said, defending himself with his chopsticks.
“Give me the fucking bottle,” Wade said to Larry.
“To the islands,” Wendy said. She said it in such a way that Wade leaned back and looked at her. She pointed to one of the islands on the painted mural. “The one behind that one.”
“What’s its name?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” Wendy said. “That’s what happened to Pago Pago.”
Stephanie laughed.
Wade said, “Hawaii’d be nice. They don’t scrape ice off their windshields night and day all winter.”
Larry felt his lungs fill with air, and he knew he was going to say something. “I have unlimited affection for the ice on my windshield, you halfback. I’m not going to have you saying anything about it. Do you even know what it is and where it comes from and what it means, you—”
“Islander,” Stephanie said. She was grinning.
“Plus, they have ice in Hawaii and an ice festival.” As Larry said this, he knew he was going to fight Wade; this whole year had been too much. Knowing he was going to fight made him terribly, urgently happy.
Wendy smiled and shook her head. “You guys.” She lifted her eyes to Larry’s. “Don’t spoil Wade’s dream.”
“Are you drunk?” Wade said.
“Wade”—Larry lifted his hand open over the table to stop traffic—“what do you suppose Wendy is going to study in college, should she decide to go?”
“Anything she wants,” Wade said. “Nursing, marketing . . .”
“Geology?”