UNDERSTANDING THE SCIENCE

“Everyone thinks they're on this big journey now,” Debbie said, refilling her glass.

- CAMILLE BORDAS

“I’ve had it with the journey. I’ve had it with you people.”

“I don't think I’m on a journey,” Burt said.

“Self-discovery,” Debbie added. “What a joke. Life’s too short to find out who we really are.”

It was the first time the six of them had got together for dinner in more than a year (since Maria's diagnosis), and after such a long time (and in celebration of Maria’s remission) they'd expected to have more interesting things to tell one another, deeper things, but they were entering dessert territory now, a cake was on the table, and only superficial topics had been broached: Ervin’s promotion, Jane and Burt’s move to the suburbs, Katherine’s recent purchase of a metabolism-tracking device—a pen-shaped item and the cause of Debbie's rant.

“How much can you know about yourself, exactly?” she said. “The therapy, the vision quests, the birth charts—do we really need the data on metabolic flexibility, too?”

Jane, in Katherine’s defense, said that, the more you knew about yourself, the more useful you could be to society.

“Bullshit,” Debbie said. “I call bullshit. Knowing whether Kat is in fat- or carb-burning mode doesn’t help anyone.”