“Whoa,” says the loudest of the sales reps from the porch. “I don’t think we’re quite at that point yet.”
“I do this all the time,” says Matthew, his bare feet in the grass, his bare hands already untying a white trash bag. There are holes in his sweatshirt.
That look on the sales reps’ faces, the way they all turn their heads slightly away, as if they can smell the garbage from the porch—it’s not something she wants to see aimed at Matthew. She watches him instead, the way he leans his head deep into the bag, his hands at work at a delicate task. His nickname from the dorm floor rushes back to her: Weird Matthew.
Half a loaf of bread emerges, still snug inside its package. One thin line of mold is the only imperfection on a plastic-wrapped block of Parmesan cheese.
The sales reps refuse to eat any of it. Mei, though, she takes it. And it tastes fine, that bread. It tastes better than fine.
“You know what this whole thing reminds me of?” says one of the sales reps. “That sleep aid we used to sell,” he says. “Remember?” He has the beginnings of a mustache, this guy, more than a stubble, more like sparse grass. “There was one case where a guy slept for twenty-four hours straight.”
“Wait,” says Matthew. He sits up fast. He seems suddenly angry. “Are you guys, like, Big Pharma?”
“Here we go,” says the guy in the red polo.
The others nod in their folding chairs. That’s what the meeting was for, they say: pharmaceutical sales.
Whatever Matthew says next is drowned out by the wailing of a helicopter, which briefly lights and then darkens the yard.
“This just does not seem real,” one of the women says. She is shaking her head. She is drinking the wine.
Matthew has gone silent. There he is on the porch swing, arms crossed, staring into the woods.
“None of this seems real,” the woman says again. “You know?”
“Maybe it isn’t,” says Matthew from the porch swing, its chains creaking as he sways. “Maybe none of this is real.”
Oh, Matthew. If only she could rescue him from the way this woman is meeting eyes with the others. He does not see it, or he does not care. But these are not Mei’s kind of women, anyway—how many hours have gone into the shaping of those eyebrows, the pale pink sheen of those fingernails?
“Like a hoax?” says the woman.
“Have you read Descartes?” says Matthew.
“No offense, dude,” says the loud guy. “But I don’t think any of us are in the mood for that kind of dorm-room bullshit tonight.”
Matthew stays quiet, arms crossed. Mei can feel a fury rising off him like heat.
“Please don’t ask me how I know this table is really here,” says the guy. He knocks his knuckles on the patio table. His teeth are red from the wine. “Please don’t ask me how I know that the blue you see is the same blue I see.”
Matthew leans back on the porch swing. Already she has come to know that look, a way of smiling that signals unhappiness.
“Let me ask you something else, then,” says Matthew. “How does it feel to get rich off the backs of sick people? How does it feel to be part of a system so fucked up that kids are going without their EpiPens and asthma inhalers because your companies have decided to raise the price by a thousand percent—just because you can?”
“I love college students,” says the first guy. “Talk to me in ten years, dude.”
Matthew says nothing. He just gets up and goes inside.
“Anyway,” says Mei, but she can think of nothing much to say, except this: “How long have you all worked together?”
“Us?” one of the women says. “We all just met on Tuesday.”
This news astounds her. How lonely it feels to discover once again how quickly other people can bond.
At a certain point, one of the women dozes off in her chair. It is an uneasy sight, and the loud guy is soon tapping her shoulder. What a relief it is to see her open her eyes.
She is slow to come around. She yawns and asks for more wine.
“I was dreaming that everything was moving backwards,” says the woman. “Like time itself was moving in reverse. In the dream, the guy popped up after he got shot. Then the soldiers shouted at him. Then he climbed backwards over the barricades and disappeared into the crowd.”
Later, the sales reps set up in the living room, having declined the bedrooms, as if this were the sort of danger that calls for safety in numbers, instead of the exact opposite thing. They use their sweatshirts as pillows once the pillows run out. They are quick to turn out the lights but slow to put away their phones, leaving only the odd glow of their faces, lit white by the screens, as they wait on their backs for sleep.
Mei and Matthew linger last on the porch. A breeze is working its way through the woods, setting the wind chimes ringing.
“I don’t think we should sleep in the house with them,” he whispers.
A soft sound is coming from inside: one of the sales reps is weeping.
“Let’s sleep out here,” he says, nodding toward the backyard. “I found a tent in the garage.”
A tent. An odd sensation keeps flooding back to her—that this day is taking place somewhere outside of normal time. Not even the strangest possibility can be ruled out.
“We can set it up in the yard,” he says.
She worries what the sales reps will think, but there’s an urge to want what Matthew wants. It feels good to agree. And so here they are in the backyard, Mei pointing a flashlight at the ground while Matthew unrolls the tent.
It seems brand new, this tent, fresh with the smell of the packaging, not like her own family’s tents, so dusty and worn out from use.
“Fucking rich people,” says Matthew. “They always have a bunch of shit around that they never bother to use.”
Where does he come from, she wonders, with his shabby sweatshirt, his worn-out backpack?
“What did you mean, earlier?” Mei whispers, as he spreads the tent flat on the grass. He is reading the directions. “About things not being real?”
“You’ve probably heard it before,” he says, without looking up.
She waits for him to say more.
“When we’re dreaming,” he says, “we can’t tell that we’re dreaming. Right?”
“Okay,” she says.
“So if we can’t tell that we’re dreaming when we really are dreaming,” he says, “then, theoretically, if we were dreaming right now, we would have no way of knowing that.”
These words in his voice—they’re like live current, the electricity of big ideas.
“But actually,” he says, “some philosophers think that the whole argument is a moot point. They think that consciousness itself is just one big delusion.”
Something bold and brave is surging in her: “I like the way you talk about things,” she says.
But he does not look up. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say.
He is still staring at the tent poles, studying the directions, squinting in the light of the flashlight. Somewhere a siren screams. The helicopters go on swirling through the air.
“Do you need some help?” she says.
“I guess so,” he says. He hands the instructions to her. But she does not need them: she knows what to do, from years of family trips. She is soon feeding the poles into the sleeves while he holds the flashlight.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” he says.
Her whole body goes tense. A prickling on her skin. She is suddenly aware of the chill in the evening air.
“What do you mean?” she says.
She doesn’t know what to do except to keep working on the tent. There’s the shuffle of nylon against nylon. All at once, the tent is up, like a ship in a bottle.
“Have you heard of Baker & Baker?” he says.
Television commercials come into her head: pharmaceuticals.