I sigh. “So one would think,” I say slowly.
Cal drums his fingers on the table, pulling out a textbook but not really looking at it.
“All these French guys,” he says. “I don't even speak French. I think only you, and King, and Lanz?—”
His sentence stops short. He clears his throat, suddenly gets very busy flipping through his text. “I keep mixing up Pascal and Descartes,” he finishes.
“I don't think learning French would help you there,” I say mildly. “In what context?”
Callahan lifts a thick shoulder. “Like, which one said,I think therefore I am, and which one had the wager?” He shakes his head. “It doesn't really matter. I'm just going to try and memorize it all for the exam, and then…”
And thenwhat?, I think.What?When the semester's over…for some reason, it had never even struck me. The end of an academic term, and we'll, what? Does the team stay here? Do I stay here? Will things get worse?
They certainly won't getbetter, I answer in my head.
Cal takes out a pencil, chews on the eraser. “Do you think there's a God, Gwenna?”
The question genuinely blindsides me. It's so frank, coming from Cal. “What?” I ask. “Why?”
“Oh, I just…” He looks up at me over his glasses, then down to his text. “You know, the wager. He thought, well, if there is a God and I believe in Him, then I got it right and everything's fine. And if there isn't, well, there's no harm in believing anyway.” Cal squints. “More or less. I'm paraphrasing. I don't know. I don't speak French.”
“No, that's basically it,” I say, dimly recalling my French rationalists. “I guess I fall somewhere along those lines,” I say. “But maybe with more of an…educated guess than a wager.”
“What do you mean?”
I look out the window at the rapidly fading sky. “Like…forecasting the weather, I guess. You can predict the chance of rain based on current conditions outside. It's not a guarantee that it will rain, but it's more likely than not, based on what you can observe.”And based on what I've observed, I think,well…there's something out there in the universe. Something I'm supposed to be a part of somehow, I remind myself, looking down at all my texts.
“Yeah,” Callahan says. “Me too.” But he doesn't sound convinced.
“What's the assignment exactly?” I say.
“I'm supposed to”—Callahan lifts up the piece of paper with the essay prompt written on it—“analyze and argue for or against Pascal's wager through the lens of Cartesian logic.” He blinks like his eyes have gone out of focus just looking at the prompt, then squints them shut. “And I think Cartesian logic’s like…you're only supposed to accept things that are clear and distinct. Not what’s like, between the lines or implied, but only what’s directly there. So…”
“Woof,” I murmur. “Remind me not to take Philosophy.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“I don’t like it,” Cal says suddenly.
I blink. “The class?”
He shakes his head. “The wager.” He presses his thumb hard into the margin of his book, not meeting my eyes. “I always thought…I don’t know. That if you believed, you believed. Like it’s notsupposedto be about proof or the best odds, or whatever. Like it’s actually maybe about the odds beingbad, and still choosing to think that everything’s going to be okay.”
I don’t think we’re talking about French rationalists anymore.
“Doyoubelieve in God, Cal?”
“Of course.” He answers so quickly it’s like a reflex. But then a little furrow appears between his brows. “It’s more…I wish God had turned out to be more like I’d thought He was, you know?”
Boy, do I.
I feel the distinct need to change the subject.
“You guys practicing again?” I ask, lightening my voice.
Cal nods.
“How’s it going?”
