"Oh," Sarah said. "You found them."
"I gather you finally committed to something … but what are these?" Adrienne then dug out Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Carl Jung's The Undiscovered Self. "There are some of mine in here."
Sarah had the bottle uncorked and headed out of the kitchen, taking the first pull. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Of course not," accepting the bottle to make the christening of the temporary new home official. She handed it back and went randomly diving for more. "Apocalypse Culture … The Theory and Practice of Apathy … Tried as Adults … Generation X, even? What did you finally decide on?"
Sarah sank down to the floor, opposite Adrienne, over the box. "You won't get mad, will you?"
"No…" Saying it automatically, hating that prefacing question; she always had. It was like waving a red flag: You're going to hate this.
Why were you having an affair, Neal?
Well, you won't get mad, will you?
"The idea started taking shape a week ago," Sarah began, "right after you left with Clay. And then when we talked on Tuesday after you'd spent the night before with his friends, that only firmed it up more."
Adrienne sat motionless, not liking the way this was heading. Clay, the friends he wouldn't even refer to as friends … this was too close.
"Don't look at me that way." Sarah leaned forward, elbows propped on the spines of books. "I want to do my thesis on the social climate and milieu that Clay and the others come out of. That kind of doomsday subculture and malaise that are woven through the post-boomer generation. All those people who missed out on the banquet, and mostly got stuck with the leftovers and the bills. The ones who don't have any hope or faith left, to the extent that they don't even see the point of trying."
Adrienne shook her head. "You're doing it again." Hoping to argue on the side of generalities rather than specifics. "Another idea rears it head, and you just can't get enough of it. Do you know how many times I've listened to this same kind of pitch?"
"What, are you keeping score?"
"Six times, Sarah."
"So I've finally committed myself to one. You knew it had to happen eventually. This is what I want to do. This is the one."
"And I've heard that line, too." She snatched the bottle away and belted down a swallow, flipped the silky blond hair up off her neck; it suddenly felt too hot. "And I suppose if you stumble across some lost tribe up in the Rockies, then that'll be the one, the one, the big one."
"Objection!" Sarah cut in. "Ludicrous example." And Adrienne nodded, Oh, all right, so it is, I speak in principle but have it your way.
Sarah took the bottle from her and set it aside so she could hold her by both hands. "I told you I wanted to do something I could get really passionate about. And I think this matters very much. Besides," she said, squeezing Adrienne's hands, "my adviser liked it."
She felt some of the starch flow from her shoulders. Well. Well. This did shed a light of validation on things, didn't it?
"Cultural anthropology?" she said softly. "Fishbine thought this idea fit?"
Sarah nodded. "He's actually pretty progressive." She let go of Adrienne's hands and implored with her own as she rocked up onto her haunches. "I think the next time the world yields up another lost tribe, that'll be it. There won't be any more. We've found them all and most of the time they've become a little more like us, and they're never any better for it. And you know? That's what intrigues me most, why we're the ones so screwed up.
"There's nothing I could do with a more primitive culture that wouldn't be redundant. So why not look at my own the way it is right now? The whole field of anthropology, it's been at a kind of pivotal point for the past several years. It's still asking the same questions, but we have to ask them in a whole new context. So in a way, the whole field becomes fresh all over again."
"Because the world's changed so much," Adrienne said.
"That's right. It's taking a new look at family structures, gender and race relations. Migration. Warfare. Law and order. All of those things are giving us fits right now and it's because we mostly ignored them, except in the most superficial ways." Sarah ran both hands back through her hair and it became a savage mane. "I just want to be part of that. It excites me."
"I know," said Adrienne. "I understand that. But…" And why such a prickly reception to this? She knew perfectly well that Sarah had not come up here to intellectually seduce Clay from her, but to be just as perfectly irrational, that was exactly how it felt. And she almost had to laugh. Fighting over a man? That was the last thing she'd ever expected to happen.
"But what?" asked Sarah.
Oh, out with it. "It feels like a tremendous conflict of interest brewing here. Almost to the point of it being unethical."
"I thought about that. But you're not in a clinical setting anymore. As soon as you brought him into your home — my home, too — and agreed to take him to his, you entered a new area. I'm not one of them, but some people would call that unethical. But it's a weird case, so…" Sarah shook her head. "You're taking a good long look at Clay in his natural environment to see how it relates to him. I just want to take a look at his natural environment to see how it relates to everyone."
And this was it, wasn't it? Adrienne looked at her bluntly. "You're in my territory now."
"That's what really bothers you, isn't it?"
Adrienne sat still for a moment, then nodded.
Sarah cocked one corner of her mouth, like a disgruntled teenager. "You have a problem with sharing sometimes."
It should have stung. Another time it might have, but not now. Because it felt justified? "It's an occupational hazard."
Sarah took the wine bottle, rolled it between flattened palms for contemplative moments. "Answer me one thing: What do you think I'm going to do to Clay, or anyone else?"
"Do?" Adrienne blinked. "I'm not sure I follow — "
"Yes you do. What effect do you think I'm going to have on the reason you're here?"
Adrienne tried to answer, found she could not. This had cut the legs from beneath her. With Clay's friends — or whatever they were to him — she wasn't even sure she should remain in contact. They had met and she had learned what they were like and perhaps that should be enough, although to be honest, a couple of them, Nina and Twitch, she had rather liked.
She pictured Sarah with them, all of them, plus any other peripheral folks who drifted along. Anthropologically speaking, fieldwork involved living with a group for a time and assimilating a part of them. She wasn't so sure she liked the tone of what Sarah would be taking in.
Based on what she had seen the other night, they were bitter and spiteful, they had no direction in their lives, and when they weren't staring morosely at the world at large, they were picking at one another. Well, sometimes you had to make a conscious effort to see the light of day, and it really was worth the effort; tell yourself, Get on with it, that the world didn't end for you unless you let it happen. Adrienne knew that, as a professional, she wasn't supposed to react to others judgmentally, but sometimes you still just felt like slapping someone.
And this was the emotional environment that Sarah would be assimilating? Adrienne could see nothing constructive coming of this —
And she realized how ridiculous that sounded. As if she were turning into her own mother, anybody's mother, circa the teen years: I don't like those friends of yours, they're a bad influence.