And whether it was the salivating or the upward-looking, his eyes seemed to have dried up. He handed his precious cargo over to Calvin, who set the tinfoil packet on the preheated grill, and then they both sank down on opposite sides of the battered picnic table.
“This is good,” Calvin said, swirling his glass. “Argentinian Malbec,I believe? Nice and earthy—probably a 2012?”
“I saw you reading the bottle.”
“I didn’t read ‘earthy,’ though! I made that up myself!”
“It should go well with the steak.” And Liam was pretty sure he would have been happy to just keep talking about wine and steak for the whole rest of the night. Just a breather, a rest, a respite from whatever the hell was going on in the rest of his life.
Calvin, of course, wasn’t known for letting things rest. “So, what’s going on with you? You’ve been in town two times in three days. Your parents are long gone, and nobody much else has heard from you since—well. Since you did that horrible thing you did. The thing so terrible it cannot be mentioned. The earth-shaking, soul-shattering betrayal of all that humanity values. Since that. So why are youback up here now?”
And just as much as Liam had wanted to keep talking about meaningless things? Now he suddenly wanted to talk about this. Because he was sitting across the table from Uncle Calvin, slightly manic Sage of the Northlands, and it would be a shame to lose the opportunity. “How old do you have to be to have a midlife crisis?”
“Haven’t had mine yet, and I’m in my sixties. Try anotherexcuse.”
“Vision quest?”
“You’re a little old for that, if you’re thinking of the Native American ritual. And a little young if you’re thinking about the wrestling movie.”
Liam sighed, then refilled his wineglass. “I’ve been up here before. Lots of times. I usually make it to the town sign and turn around. But the other day—I kept going.”
Calvin held out his own empty glass for a refill. “Why?”
And Liam told him all of it. No deep analysis, no conclusions. Just the shit with the project, the conversation with Tristan, the overwhelming sense—and if he was honest, it was a sense he’d had before, not just since things started going wrong at work—that he was missing something. That he wasn’t doing liferight.
“Maybe your boss wasn’t wrong.” Calvin had stood up halfway through Liam’s storyand put the steaks on the grill, and now he was standing over them, tongs poised and ready. “Pompous and annoying? Yeah, probably. But all the shit about finding your passion… was he wrong about that? Have you really been passionate about what you’ve been doing?”
Liam wanted to stand up and pace, but he forced himself to stay still. “You’resaying this? You run a small-engine-repair shop. Youthink—I mean, where’syourpassion?”
“Small engines,” Calvin said as if it was obvious. He turned to face Liam as he said, “I fucking love them. The logic of them, the self-contained genius of it all. I can tear a small engine down and build it back up all with my own two hands. I run my own business, becausethat’sself-contained too. Small engines are the ultimate passion for someone who valuesindependence. Hell yeah.” He turned back to the grill, lifted the steaks up onto the warming rack, then turned back around. “Now you tell me. What’s so cool about architecture? About working for your power-tripping boss and all your Richie Rich clients. Tell me why it’s great. But before you do?” Calvin leaned down so their eyes were level. “Pretend you’re talking to Ben. Pretend you’re talkingto someone who sees through your bullshit and your smooth talking, someone who knowyoufor who you are. Tellhimwhat’s so great about your job.”
Even without the extra, Liam might have been honest. But thinking about telling it to Ben? Shit. That pushed him over the edge. “Part of it’s the prestige,” he admitted. “The ego boost. Seeing something I designed getting built? Like, someone spendinga hundred million dollars on making something frommy braininto reality? That’s a rush. Absolutely.”
“And your name goes on it.”
“Well, no. The firm’s name. Tristan’s name. But that actually proves it’snotall about ego, right? I mean, the clients probably know who did most of the work, but the rest of the world doesn’t. And I’m okay with that, more or less.”
“More or less?”
“I’m not sayingI don’t resent it sometimes. But—no. I’m okay with it, mostly.”
“You love your job. You just quit a job you love.”
“Are those steaks ready? There’s been a lot of buildup for this meal, and I don’t want a dried-out steak just because I started babbling about some stupid job bullshit.”
“The steaks are resting. Did you just quit a job you love?”
“No,” Liam said. As soon as the word was out ofhis mouth he knew it was the truth. “But lots of people don’t love their jobs. I made good money, I met interesting people—”
“Interestingpeople? Orrichpeople?”
“Some of the rich people were interesting. There’s no monopoly on character for the working class, you know. Just because someone’s got money doesn’t automatically mean they’re shallow or boring.”
“Roughly what percentage of richpeople are deep and interesting, would you say?”
“Probably about the same percentage of poor people who are deep and interesting.”
“Damn. That few?” Calvin pointed his chin toward a stainless-steel bowl on the table. “Toss that, will you? Salad.”
