Marianne saw us holding hands in college one day and said: you’re back together! We shrugged. It was a relationship, and also not a relationship. Each of our gestures felt spontaneous, and if from the outside we resembled a couple, that was an interesting coincidence for us. We developed a joke about it, which was meaningless to everyone including ourselves: what is a friend? we would say humorously. What is a conversation?
In the mornings Bobbi liked to get out of bed before me, so she could use up all the hot water in the shower like she used to when she was staying in the other room. Then she would drink an entire pot of coffee with her hair dripping wet at the kitchen table. Sometimes I carried a towel from the hot press and draped it onto her head, but she’d just continue to ignore me and read about social housing online. She peeled oranges and left the soft, sweet-smelling peel wherever she dropped it, to turn dry and crinkly on the tabletop or an arm of the sofa. In the evenings we walked through Phoenix Park under an umbrella, linking arms and smoking at the foot of the Wellington monument.
In bed we talked for hours, conversations that spiralled out from observations into grand, abstract theories and back again. Bobbi talked about Ronald Reagan and the IMF. She had an unusual respect for conspiracy theorists. She was interested in the nature of things, but she was also generous. I didn’t feel with her, like I did with many other people, that while I was talking she was just preparing the next thing she wanted to say. She was a great listener, an active listener. Sometimes while I spoke she would make a sudden noise, like the force of her interest in what I was saying just expressed itself from her mouth. Oh! she would say. Or: so true!
One night in December we went out to celebrate Marianne’s birthday. Everyone was in a good mood, the Christmas lights were all lit up outside, and people were telling funny stories about things Marianne had done and said while drunk or sleepy. Bobbi did an impression of her, tipping her head down and glancing up sweetly through her eyelashes, lifting her shoulders in a feigned shrug. I laughed, it really was funny, and said: again! Marianne was wiping tears away. Stop it, she said. Oh my lord. Bobbi and I had bought Marianne a pair of gloves, a nice blue leather pair, one glove from each of us. Andrew called us cheap and Marianne said he lacked imagination. She put them on in front of us: the Frances glove, she said. And the Bobbi glove. Then she mimed them talking to each other like puppets. On and on and on, she said.
That night we talked about the war in Syria, and the invasion of Iraq. Andrew said Bobbi didn’t understand history and she just blamed everything on the West. Everyone at the table made an ‘ooh’ noise like we were all on a game show together. In the ensuing disagreement, Bobbi displayed a remorseless intelligence, seeming to have read everything on whatever topic Andrew mentioned, correcting him only when necessary for her broader argument, not even alluding to the fact that she’d almost completed a history degree. I knew it was the first thing I would have mentioned if someone belittled me. Bobbi was different. While she spoke, her eyes often pointed upward, at light fixtures or far-off windows, and she gesticulated with her hands. All I could do with my attention was use it on other people, watching them for signs of agreement or irritation, trying to invite them into the discussion when they fell silent.
Bobbi and Melissa were still in touch at the time, but it was clear that they’d drawn away from one another. Bobbi had formulated new theories about Melissa’s personality and private life which were noticeably less flattering than those she had earlier advanced. I was striving to love everyone, which meant I tried to stay quiet.
We shouldn’t have trusted them, Bobbi said.
We were eating Chinese food from paper boxes at the time, sitting on my sofa and half-watching a Greta Gerwig film.
We didn’t know how codependent they were, Bobbi said. I mean, they were only ever in it for each other. It’s probably good for their relationship to have these dramatic affairs sometimes, it keeps things interesting for them.
Maybe.
I’m not saying Nick was intentionally trying to mess with you. Nick I actually like. But ultimately they were always going to go back to this fucked-up relationship they have because that’s what they’re used to. You know? I just feel so mad at them. They treated us like a resource.
You’re disappointed we didn’t get to break up their marriage, I said.
She laughed with a mouth full of noodles. On the television screen, Greta Gerwig was shoving her friend into some shrubbery as a game.
Who even gets married? said Bobbi. It’s sinister. Who wants state apparatuses sustaining their relationship?
I don’t know. What is ours sustained by?
That’s it! That’s exactly what I mean. Nothing. Do I call myself your girlfriend? No. Calling myself your girlfriend would be imposing some prefabricated cultural dynamic on us that’s outside our control. You know?
I thought about this until the film was over. Then I said: wait, so does that mean you’re not my girlfriend? She laughed. Are you serious? she said. No. I’m not your girlfriend.
*
Philip said he thought Bobbi was my girlfriend. We went out for coffee together during the week, and he told me that Sunny had offered him a part-time job, with real wages. I told him that I wasn’t jealous, which disappointed him, though I was also worried it was a lie. I liked Sunny. I liked the idea of books and reading. I didn’t know why I couldn’t enjoy things like other people did.
I’m not asking you if she’s my girlfriend, I said. I’m telling you she’s not.
But she obviously is. I mean, you’re doing some radical lesbian thing or whatever, but in basic vocabulary she is your girlfriend.
No. Again, this isn’t a question, it’s a statement.
He was crinkling up a sugar sachet in his fingers. We’d been talking for a while about his new job, a conversation that had left me feeling flat like a soft drink.
Well, I think she is, he said. I mean, in a good way. I think it’s really good for you. Especially after all that unpleasantness with Melissa.
What unpleasantness?
You know, whatever weird sex thing was going on there. With the husband.
I stared at him and I was at a loss to say anything at all. I watched the blue ink of the sugar sachet rub off onto his fingers, etching his fingerprints in thin blue ridges. Finally I said ‘I’ several times, which he didn’t seem to notice. The husband? I thought. Philip, you know his name.
What weird thing? I said.
Weren’t you sleeping with both of them? That’s what people were saying.
No, I wasn’t. Not that it would be wrong if I was, but I wasn’t.
Oh, okay, he said. I heard all kinds of weird things were going on.
I don’t really know why you’re saying this to me.
At this, Philip looked up with a shocked expression, and he reddened visibly. The sugar sachet slipped and he had to pinch it quickly with his fingers.
Sorry, he said. I didn’t mean to upset you.
You’re just telling me about these rumours because you think, what, I’ll laugh about it? Like it’s funny to me that people say nasty things behind my back?