Conversations with Friends(18)

Was I?

Seriously, I really do appreciate how nice you were, I said.

Wait. Hey. Are you all right?

Little tears had started slipping out of my eyes and down onto the pillow. I wasn’t sad, I didn’t know why I was crying. I’d had this problem before, with Bobbi, who believed it was an expression of my repressed feelings. I couldn’t stop the tears so I just laughed self-effacingly instead, to show that I wasn’t invested in the crying. I knew I was embarrassing myself badly, but there was nothing I could do about it.

This happens, I said. It wasn’t anything you did.

Nick touched his hand to my body then, just under my breast. I felt soothed like I was an animal, and I cried harder.

Are you sure? he said.

Yeah. You can ask Bobbi. I mean, don’t.

He smiled and said: yeah, I won’t. He was stroking me with the tips of his fingers, like the way he petted his dog. I wiped at my face roughly.

You’re really handsome, you know, I said.

He laughed then.

Is that all I get? he said. I thought you liked my personality.

Do you have one?

He turned over on his back, looking up at the ceiling with a bemused expression. I can’t believe we did this, he said. I knew then that the crying was over. I felt good about everything I could think of. I touched the inside of his wrist and said: yes, you can.

I woke up late the next morning. Nick made French toast for breakfast and I got the bus back into town. I sat at the back, near a window, where the sun bore down on my face like a drill and the cloth of the seat felt sensationally tactile against my bare skin.

*



That evening Bobbi said she needed somewhere to stay to get away from the ‘domestic situation’. Apparently Eleanor had thrown away some of Jerry’s possessions over the weekend, and at the height of the ensuing argument Lydia had locked herself in the bathroom and screamed that she wanted to die.

Deeply uncool, Bobbi said.

I told her she could stay with me. I didn’t know what else to say. She knew I had an empty apartment. That evening she played around with my electric piano using my laptop for sheet music and I checked my email on my phone. No one had been in touch. I picked up a book but didn’t feel like reading. I hadn’t done any writing that morning, or the morning before. I had started reading long interviews with famous writers and noticing how unlike them I was.

You’ve got a notification on your instant message thing, said Bobbi.

Don’t read it. Let me see it.

Why are you saying don’t read it?

I don’t want you to read it, I said. Give me the laptop.

She handed me the laptop, but I could see she wasn’t going back to the piano. The message was from Nick.

Nick: i know, i’m a bad person

Nick: do you want to come over again some time this week?



Who’s it from? Bobbi said.

Can you relax about it?

Why did you go ‘don’t read it’?

Because I didn’t want you to read it, I said.

She bit on her thumbnail coquettishly and then got onto the bed beside me. I shut my laptop screen, which made her laugh.

I didn’t open it, she said. But I did see who it was from.

Okay, good for you.

You really like him, don’t you?

I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.

Melissa’s husband. You have a serious thing for him.

I rolled my eyes. Bobbi lay back on the bed and grinned. I hated her then and even wanted to harm her.

Why, are you jealous? I said.

She smiled, but absently, as if she was thinking of something else. I didn’t know what else to say to her. She went back to the piano for a while and then she wanted to go to bed. When I woke up the next morning she was already gone.

*



I stayed with Nick most nights that week. He wasn’t working, so he went to the gym for a couple of hours in the morning and I went into the agency or just wandered around the shops. Then in the evening he made dinner and I played with the spaniel. I told Nick I didn’t think I’d eaten so much food in my life, which was true. At home my parents had never cooked with chorizo or aubergine. I had also never tasted fresh avocado before, though I didn’t tell Nick about that.

One night I asked him if he was afraid of Melissa finding out about us and he said he didn’t think she would find out.

But you found out, I said. When she had affairs.

No, she told me.

What, really? Out of the blue?

The first time, yeah, he said. It was very surreal. She was away at one of these book festivals, and she called me at like five in the morning and said she had something to tell me, that was it.

Fuck.

But it was just a one-off thing, they didn’t keep seeing each other after that. The other time was a lot more involved. I probably shouldn’t be telling you all these secrets, should I? I’m not trying to make her look bad. Or at least I don’t think I am, I don’t know.

Over dinner we exchanged some of the details about our lives. I explained that I wanted to destroy capitalism and that I considered masculinity personally oppressive. Nick told me he was ‘basically’ a Marxist, and he didn’t want me to judge him for owning a house. It’s this or paying rent forever, he said. But I acknowledge it’s troubling. It sounded to me like his family was very wealthy, but I was wary of probing the issue, since I already felt self-conscious about never paying for anything. His parents were still married and he had two siblings.