Knitting Under the Influence

closed.”

“I don't always agree with you.”

“That's okay.” He patted her leg. “Everyone makes mistakes, sweetheart.”

She knocked his hand off. “You're an asshole, you know that?”

“Come on, Luce, you hate religion as much as I do. Why are you defending this guy?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe Ron gets something out of his religion that we don't understand. It's possible. People's brains work differently. And if it doesn't interfere with his work, then let him have it and don't call him an idiot for it.”

“Even though he is one?”

She thumped her scotch glass down. “What about Dickens? What about Einstein? There are lots of wildly brilliant people who've believed in God.”

“They probably just pretended to so they wouldn't piss off the mass population of idiots. We all do what we have to to survive.” He tilted his throat back and drank some beer. “I’m bored with this subject,” he said as he set the bottle back down. “So, David, Lucy tells me you have a girlfriend. Who is she and why aren't you calling her right now and telling her to come join us?”

David shrugged. “We're just dating. It's not a girlfriend thing yet.

“She at UCLA?”

“Yeah.”

“Postdoc?”

“Actually,” David said, “she's an undergraduate.”

James hooted at that. “You're kidding me.”

“A junior.”

“Come on, dude, you can't go fishing in that pond. You start with undergrads, you'll get a taste for them and you won't be able to stop. There are tons of guys like that in the department, dirty old men who like little girls. You don't want to go there.”

“I wasn't planning to,” David said. “This just… you know, happened.” He poked at a drop of beer on the outside of his mug. “Anyway, like I said, it's not all that serious-we've just had dinner a couple of times.”

“What does she want to do when she graduates?” James asked.

“Well, she's premed-”

“A doctor, then,” James said. “And, since she's a girl, I’m guessing either a pediatrician or an OB. That's what they all want to be.”

“Why do you always have to generalize about people?” Lucy said. “I was premed and I didn't want to be a pediatrician or an OB.”

“What did you want to be?” James asked.

“A veterinarian.”

He groaned. “The only medical career that's actually more girly than being a pediatrician or an OB. Why'd you have to tell me that? I just lost any respect I ever had for you.”

“In case you hadn't noticed, I didn't actually become one,” Lucy said. “At some point I decided it would be a lot more fun to kill animals than take care of them.”

“Oh, please,” James said. “Would you really rather be spending your days telling old ladies to stop overfeeding their fat little pugs? Killing rats is much more fun than that.”

“I like rats,” said Lucy, who was starting to feel the effect of the scotch she had downed.

“No one likes rats.”

“I do. I had a pet rat once. And a dog. And two cats. And a turtle.”

“That's excessive,” James said.

“Not all at once.”

James stood up abruptly. “I’ve got to hit the John. Be right back.” He left. There was a moment of silence.

“I hate sac'ing rats,” Lucy said.

“Me, too,” said David.

“Let's set them all free,” she said. “Let's go back to the lab and set them all free to live a happy carefree life eating trash and having casual rat sex.”

“You know we can't,” he said. “They'd die within days. And the research we're doing is worth sac'ing a few rats for.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know that.”

“So we're trapped,” he said.

“Like rats in a cage.”

III

Knitting circle was at Kathleen's place that Sunday. (At Sari's the week before, Lucy had protested. “There are no chairs in her apartment. It'll kill our backs.” “Oh, stop being such a princess,” Kathleen had said, and Sari said, “It's her turn, Lucy.”)

When Lucy walked in the open apartment door, Kathleen called out, “Hey, Luce, come quick! Sari just told me she kissed Jason Smith!”

“No fucking way!” Lucy said, dropping her bag and running over. Kathleen and Sari were cross-legged and side by side on an airbed-the only furniture in the whole room-already knitting. Lucy kicked off her shoes and sank down on the floor in front of them.

“I didn't kiss him,” Sari said. “He kissed me before I could stop him.”

“Why would you want to stop him?” Kathleen said.

“Come on,” Sari said. “You guys know why this is weird for me. And it's just getting weirder. I mean, I see him with Zack almost every day, but I can't even look at him. I feel like he's waiting for me to say something. I think he thinks I’m screwing with his mind, but I’m not, I’m really not-”

“You should be,” Lucy said.

“I told him about Charlie. He said he hadn't remembered that I had a brother.”

“You think he's lying?” Lucy asked.

“No-he probably doesn't remember him. Which only shows how little he-” Sari waved her hand in the air. “You know. That even when he was mean to Charlie, he barely noticed him. Like squashing a bug or something.”

“Is he really that big a jerk?” Kathleen asked. “He seemed kind of nice.”

“I don't know,” Sari said. “He says all the right things. But don't forget-since high school, he's had a kid with autism. It changes people.”

“So maybe he's changed,” Kathleen said.

“Yeah, but does that count?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know…” Sari thought a moment, putting her knitting down on the floor next to her and hugging her knees to her chest. “Here's a guy who treated people badly when things were going well for him, and then this thing happened with his kid. So now he's more sensitive about other people and maybe even kinder… But, the truth is, if he'd been given the choice, he probably would have rather gone on having a perfect life and being a total jerk.” She looked up. “Can you really give a guy credit for that? If he's only a decent human being because it was forced on him?”

“I don't think you can ever really trust someone like that,” Lucy said. “I mean, if a guy goes around killing people and then his own mother gets killed, it's a little late for him to decide that murder is wrong-”

“Well, murder? Kathleen said. “Let's just compare him to Saddam Hussein and be done with it. Come on, Lucy-being a schoolyard bully isn't the same as being a murderer.” She stabbed her needles at each other, frowning in concentration. “Anyway, you can't really judge people on who they might have been if things had been different, can you? All you can do is take them the way they are and like them or not for