Conversations with Friends(20)

On Friday night, before Melissa came home from London, we watched North by Northwest and shared a bottle of wine. Nick was leaving the country the following week to film something in Edinburgh, so I wouldn’t see him again for a short time. I can’t remember most of what we said that night. I remember the scene on the train where Cary Grant’s character is flirting with the blonde woman, and that for some reason I repeated one of her lines out loud in a clipped American accent. I said: and I don’t particularly like the book I’ve started. This made Nick laugh a lot, for no real reason, or maybe because my accent was so bad.

Now you do Cary Grant, I said.

In a mid-Atlantic cinema voice Nick said: the moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.

Do you typically pretend for long? I said.

You tell me, Nick said in his normal voice.

I think I figured it out pretty quickly. But I was concerned I was just deluding myself.

Oh, I felt the same way about you.

He had picked up the bottle and was refilling our glasses.

So is this just sex, I said, or do you actually like me?

Frances, you’re drunk.

You can tell me, I won’t be offended.

No, I know you won’t, he said. I think you want me to say it’s just sex.

I laughed. I was happy he said that, because it was what I wanted him to think, and because I thought he really knew that and was just kidding around.

Don’t feel bad, I said. It’s terribly enjoyable. I may have mentioned that before.

Only a couple of times. But I’d like it in writing if possible. Just something permanent that I can look at on my deathbed.

He slipped his hand between my knees then. I was wearing a striped dress and my legs were bare; the moment he touched me I felt hot and passive as if I were asleep. Any strength I had seemed to leave me completely and when I tried to speak I stammered.

What happens when your wife gets home? I said.

Yeah. We’ll work something out.





10




I hadn’t spoken to Bobbi since the night she’d stayed over in the apartment. Because I was staying with Nick and not thinking about anything else, I hadn’t tried to get in touch with her or put much thought into the question of why she hadn’t called. Then after Melissa came back to Dublin, I got an email from Bobbi with the subject heading ‘jealous???’

look, i don’t care if you have a crush on nick, and i wasn’t trying to embarrass you or whatever. sorry if it came across that way. (and i’m not going to be moralistic about him being married either, i’m pretty sure melissa has affairs anyway). BUT it was really fucked up of you to accuse me of being jealous of him. it is just so stereotypically homophobic to accuse a gay woman of being secretly jealous of men, which i know you know. but even more than that it’s really devaluing to our friendship to make out like i’m competing with a man for your attention. what does that say about how you see me? do you really rank our relationship below your passing sexual interest in some middle aged married guy? it hurt my fucking feelings actually.



I was in work when I received the email, but none of the other people who worked there were around. I read the message several times. For some reason I deleted it briefly, and then went into my trash folder to retrieve it almost straight away. Then I marked it as unread and opened it to read it again as if for the first time. Of course Bobbi was right. I had called her jealous to try and hurt her. I just hadn’t known that it had actually worked, or that it was even possible to hurt her no matter how hard I tried. Realising not only that hurting Bobbi’s feelings was within my power but that I had done it practically offhandedly and without noticing, made me uncomfortable. I wandered around the office and poured some water from the cooler into a plastic cup though I wasn’t thirsty. Then eventually I sat back down.

It took me several drafts to finish writing my reply.

Hey, you’re right, it was a weird and wrong thing to say and I shouldn’t have said it. I felt defensive and I just wanted to make you angry. I feel guilty for hurting your feelings over something so stupid. I’m sorry.



I sent it and then logged out of my email for a while to get some work done.

Philip came in around eleven and we talked a little. I told him I hadn’t written anything in a week and he raised his eyebrows.

I thought you were all about discipline, he said.

I was.

Are you having a weird month? You seem like you are.

On my lunch break I logged back into my email. Bobbi had replied.

ok i forgive you. but really, nick? is that your thing now? i just feel like he probably unironically reads articles called ‘one weird trick for perfect abs’



if it absolutely had to be a man i assumed it would be someone wussy and effeminate like philip, this is so unexpected.



I didn’t reply to that. Bobbi and I had always shared a contempt for the cultish pursuit of male physical dominance. Even very recently we had been asked to leave Tesco for reading aloud inane passages from men’s magazines on the shop floor. But Bobbi was wrong about Nick. That wasn’t what he was like. Really he was the kind of person who would laugh at Bobbi’s cruel impression of him and not try to correct her. But I couldn’t explain that to her. I certainly couldn’t tell her what I found most endearing about him, which was that he was attracted to plain and emotionally cold women like me.