Conversations with Friends(45)

When I retrieved my phone it said I’d missed a call from my father. I tried calling back but he didn’t answer. By then I was getting cold so I put all my clothes back on and went downstairs to tell my mother I was going to drop by my father’s house. She was sitting at the table reading the paper; she didn’t look up. Good woman, she said. Tell him I was asking after him.

I walked the same old route through town. I hadn’t brought a jacket, and at his house I rang the doorbell and jogged from foot to foot to warm myself up. My breath fogged the glass. I rang again and nothing happened. When I opened the door, I could hear nothing inside the house. The hall smelt of damp and of something worse than damp too, something slightly sour. A refuse sack was tied up and abandoned under the hall table. I called my father’s name: Dennis?

I could see the light was on inside the kitchen so I pushed open the door and reflexively lifted a hand against my face. The smell was so rancid that it felt physical, like heat or touch. Several half-eaten meals had accumulated around the table and countertops, in various states of decay, surrounded by dirty tissues and empty bottles. The fridge door was ajar, leaking a triangle of yellow light onto the floor. A bluebottle crawled along a knife which had been abandoned in a large jar of mayonnaise, and four others were batting themselves against the kitchen window. In the bin I could see a handful of white maggots, writhing blindly like boiling rice. I stepped backwards out of the room and closed the door.

In the hallway I tried calling Dennis’s phone again. He didn’t answer. Standing in his house was like watching someone familiar smile at me, but with missing teeth. I wanted to hurt myself again, in order to feel returned to the safety of my own physical body. Instead I turned around and walked out. I pulled my sleeve over my hand to shut the door.





20




My internship in the agency ended formally at the start of September. We each had one last meeting with Sunny, to talk about our plans for the future and what we’d learned from our experiences, though I didn’t foresee having anything to say about any of that. I came into her office on my last day and she asked me to close the door and sit down.

Well, you don’t want to work in a literary agency, she said.

I smiled like she was joking, while she looked at some papers and then put them aside. She put her elbows up on her desk, holding her chin in her hands contemplatively.

I wonder about you, she said. You don’t seem to have a plan.

Yeah, that’s something I definitely don’t have.

You’re just hoping to fall on your feet.

I looked out the window behind her onto the beautiful Georgian buildings and the buses passing. It was raining again.

Tell me about the holiday, she said. How is Melissa’s piece coming on?

I told her about étables, about Derek, whom Sunny knew, and about Valerie, whom she had heard of. Sunny called her a ‘formidable woman’. I grimaced a little bit and we laughed. I realised that I didn’t want to leave Sunny’s office, that I felt as if I was letting go of something I wasn’t finished with.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, I said.

She nodded and then gave an expressive, accepting shrug.

Well, your reports were always very good, she said. If you ever want a reference you know where to find me. And I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.

Thank you, I said. For everything.

She gave me one last sympathetic or despairing look and then went back to the papers on her desk. She told me I could call Philip in on my way out. I did.

*



That night in my apartment I was up late tinkering with commas in a long poem I was working on. I saw Nick was online and I sent him a message: hello. I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking peppermint tea because the milk in the fridge was sour. He replied, asking if I’d received his email five days ago and I said yes, and not to worry about the awkward phone call. I didn’t want to tell him I had been in hospital, or why. It was a story with no conclusion, and anyway it was embarrassing. He told me they were all missing Bobbi and me over in France.

me: equally?

Nick: haha

Nick: well maybe i miss you like, slightly more

me: thanks

Nick: yeah i keep waking up at night when i hear people on the stairs Nick: and then i remember you’re gone

Nick: crushing disappointment



I laughed to myself although there was no one there to see me. I loved when he was available to me like this, when our relationship was like a Word document which we were writing and editing together, or a long private joke which nobody else could understand. I liked to feel that he was my collaborator. I liked to think of him waking up at night and thinking of me.

me: that’s actually very cute

me: I miss your sweet handsome face

Nick: i wanted to send you a song earlier because it reminded me of you Nick: but i anticipated your sarcastic reply and chickened out me: hahaha

me: please send it!

me: I promise not to be sarcastic

Nick: would it be ok if i called you on the phone

Nick: ive been drinking and the effort of typing is killing me me: oh you’re drunk, is that why you’re being nice Nick: i think john keats had a name for women like you Nick: a french name

Nick: you see where i’m going with this

me: please call



He called me. He didn’t really sound drunk on the phone, he sounded sleepy in a nice way. We said again that we missed one another. I held the cup of peppermint tea in my fingers, feeling it get cool. Nick apologised again about the phone call the other night. I’m a bad person, he said. I told him not to say that. No, I’m bad, he said. I’m a bad guy. He told me about what they’d been up to in étables, about the weather, and some castle they went to visit. I told him about my internship finishing up, and he said I had never seemed invested in it anyway. Maybe I was distracted by drama in my personal life, I said.