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Richard thinks about multiverses. He thinks about string theory and metaphysics and all the other subjects he never managed to grasp. There’s something so strange, about how the smartest people he’s ever met all had almost nothing in common in the purview of their knowledge. Richard learned how to code before he learned how to do his own laundry or make his own bed, really, and it’s what he’s good at, it’s all he’s good at, and even though he may in fact be very, very good at it (which he believes he might be, because it’s just a language with straightforward logical rules, just like Latin or German or Swahili, and if you follow the rules you’ll know what to do), it still makes him sweat and cringe to think about how little he knows about everything else.
In college he went to lectures by neuroscientists and engineers who were at the tops of their fields, but even they couldn’t hold a conversation about a subject far outside of their own, and Richard isn’t even at the top of his field, regardless of what the $50,000 check on the wall tells him. He’s firmly in the middle and that’s what makes him feel even smaller. It’s perverse, how knowing that he’s smart only makes him feel so, so, so much stupider.
He thinks about multiverses. He’s never really been one for sci-fi. He finds the tropes tiring and doesn’t have the patience to read fiction at all really. But Gilfoyle has rambled on about Heinlein and referenced Hitchhiker’s Guide enough times that Richard gets the gist. He thinks about the idea that there’s another universe where he’s a different person, a better person, someone who doesn’t panic and sweat and retch when he hits the smallest speedbump. He wonders if Parallel Richard is taller. Maybe Parallel Richard ate his Wheaties and didn’t stunt his growth with caffeine as a kid. Maybe Parallel Richard can get through a conversation without once stumbling over his words or choosing the wrong ones. It’s not his fault; his mind goes from A to D before his mouth can catch up, but it leaves him skipping over B and C and they come out wrong and he feels so graceless and stupid and small.
He thinks he’s a coward. He thinks Parallel Richard would be able to take what he wants. Or, well, not take, necessarily, but he’d go after it, he’d pursue it, he wouldn’t waffle and hedge and wait for it to come to him. He’d get what he wants. That’s the important part.
But as far as he knows, there’s not another version of himself, and the thing is, even if one existed, it probably wouldn’t like him. Richard is hard to like. He thinks of himself that way, even in the third person. Richard is hard to like. The first time he heard that was at a parent-teacher conference in third grade, his ear pressed to the door as his mother and teacher conversed inside. He knew it even before then, was an anxious child from day one, but had never heard it spelled out so plainly until that day, and it still sticks with him even now. Richard is hard to like. He thinks about putting it on his business cards, not as a brag but as a fair warning. Richard doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time. Richard is prone to panic attacks and nausea. Richard will probably let you down. Richard is hard to like.
“Are you feeling all right? I have some fruit leather in my laptop case,” Jared says.
Richard blinks. “Right. No.”
“No? Okay, hold on –” Jared’s unzipping his bag before Richard blinks again and shakes his head.
“No, no, I meant yes. Yes, I’m feeling all right. You don’t have to do that.” He licks his lips and finds them chapped. “Sorry. I’m just a little… on edge.”
“It’s understandable.” Jared zips his laptop bag closed. The office lobby they’re sitting in has a glossy Jackson Pollock print blown up on the wall. He recognizes it as a Pollock because his last therapist had the same print hanging over her receptionist’s desk, and he supposes he’s developed a sort of Pavlovian anxiety response to beige and turquoise splatters. Here is the Skinner box, here is the mouse; the cheese, he assumes, is the privilege of being able to breathe normally.
Multiverse Richard, Parallel Richard, wouldn’t do this. Parallel Richard could probably stroll through the SF MOMA hand-in-hand with a date and not have to excuse himself to wipe the sweat from his forehead in the men’s room once.
Jared folds his hands in his lap and Richard glances down at his wrists. Jared has nice hands, long and wide with deep nail beds and neatly clipped nails. Richard’s own nails are bitten down to the quick and there’s a callus the size of a pimple on his right ring finger from the way he types. Another comparison where he comes up short. But he likes Jared’s wrists almost better than his hands, because he sees them less. They’re as pale as the rest of his skin and always hidden beneath his sweaters and neat pressed button-downs. Every once in a while, when he stretches or reaches across the table, his sleeves ride up and when Richard catches a glimpse of his wrist, it takes him a half second to refocus. Which, he thinks, is probably not normal. He feels like some sort of Victorian weirdo, wolf-whistling over a flash of ankle. Yes, stare at his wrists even more, Richard. Heaven forbid you get a flash of Adam’s apple. Don’t go into cardiac arrest when he takes off his sweater.
(Which wouldn’t even happen, and that’s the stupidest part. He’s seen Jared change clothes and didn’t stare, didn’t bat an eye, not because it didn’t do anything for him but because there were more terrifying things to worry about, because he was halfway down the road to a panic attack at the time anyway. He’s not driven to distraction when he wears a polo shirt. It only seems like Jared’s wrists matter when everything else is covered, because then they’re all he can focus on.)
“For what it’s worth, I think it was wise to leave Erlich out of this meeting,” Jared says, tentatively. Like he’s going out of his way not to cause ripples, which is how he does everything, like he’s being careful not to disturb the air around him. “I understand the appeal of his, ah, bombast, but at this point we might need a more skilled hand.”
“Like a surgeon,” Richard says absently, his mind snapping back to people smarter than he is.
“Right.” Jared steeples his fingers in his lap, then quickly refolds them, as if he’s changed his mind. “So far, we’ve come at this with a chainsaw. I think now it’s time for a scalpel.”
“You’re not a scalpel,” Richard says abruptly. A glance at Jared’s face belies a look of slight concern, and he adds, “I wouldn’t say that. I think you’re more like – a chisel. Because you don’t – ugh. Never mind.”
“What don’t I do?”
Richard takes a breath, tries to force his mind to jump back to point B in order to put together the words. “Because, you know, the whole idea – you know, there was some sort of famous artist, a sculptor, and someone asked him how they made a statue, and they said ‘I just took a block of marble and a chisel and I took away everything that wasn’t the statue.’ And I think that’s what you do, sort of. To a degree. Because you don’t, you’re not a scalpel, you don’t cut people with words and just leave them alone to scab over. And you don’t just hit people with a chainsaw. It’s more considered than that. You look at the situation and you evaluate it and then you just take away everything that isn’t the solution.” A breath. “A chisel. That’s the point. That’s what we’re doing. We have to take away whatever isn’t the deal we want. So yes. I think this is right. It feels right.”
Another breath.
The receptionist calls their names and the firm’s partners stride into the lobby and Richard can feel his ears burning. They’re probably bright red and he is sweating again and he wipes his clammy hands on his chinos before the round of handshakes begins. He chances a sidelong glance at Jared during the fracas and maybe it’s his imagination, but he thinks he sees a flush of red spreading across his cheeks as well.
When they walk out, a deal in hand to take back to the incubator like a trophy, Richard is breathing normally again. The last few rounds of meetings with investors have gone so badly that this one felt like a comparative walk in the park – not a single testicle was exposed, not one partner cursed out. It’s Jared’s light touch that does the trick, his considered manner cut with Hooli-honed networking charm. When he’s on, he’s on, which is not to say that he’s “on” in the sense that he’s Steve Martin or anything like that, but he knows what to say and how to say it in the same way that Richard simply does not. But Richard fills in the blanks, supplies the bassline, pipes up when need be, and when the last set of hands have been shaken, they leave the office with heads high and tentative smiles on their faces.
They’re squinting into the bright sunshine as they close the car doors, Jared in the passenger seat, Richard in the driver’s. “I think,” Jared says, “that went incredibly well.”
“Yeah,” smiles Richard. It’s genuine. He’s not faking it. He’s staring straight at Jared and his eyes are so, so, so stupidly blue and deep, and if he were any good at doing creative things with words he’d be able to compare them to tidepools or something, but he’s not, that’s not what he’s good at. And then his eyes drift down to Jared’s parted lips and linger there, just for a second. Just long enough that he sees Jared move, just a little bit, lifting one of his hands from his lap and starting to move toward Richard. There's another half-second where it's obvious that something is about to happen, something they won't be able to take back, and that realization hits Richard so hard it gives him whiplash.
He snaps back to earth and clears his throat and sticks the key into the ignition and avoids doing something stupid. Jared quickly (too quickly) moves his hands to his knees. A moment of screaming silence as the car engine grumbles to life.
“We work really well together,” Richard says, to fill the space, and then the radio pops back on and he busies himself switching stations.
He thinks Parallel Richard would have gone through with it.