P peered incredulously at the phone screen.
“You’re shitting me. You are shitting me!”
“What now?”
“Ths. Ghh. Pfrrr...”
“Oh God, Pip again?”
“This is just unbe-fucking-lievable!”
“Not on current form.”
“No, listen, you’ve... Read this.”
Goodnight sweetie. When am I going to see you again?
I tried not to...
“You’re smirking,” accused P.
“Er. You got me. Jesus, though.”
“Well I guess this is the Hot part of the Cycle of Pip. ‘I’m hot! I’m cold! I’m hot! I’m cold! Oooh, I’m both at the same time!’”
I mimed texting back. “‘What the fuck are you on?’ When was the last time you spoke?”
“Haven’t spoken since Sunday; last text was a two-liner about the band.”
“Goodnight sweetie?!”
P’s eyes rolled. “Tell me about it.”
We walked on for a bit. A dog was yapping away at nothing. Poor neighbours.
“Is this me...?” started P.
I squinted deadpan at my friend. “Well, yeah, probably - but all your shirts look the same to me, so I’m probably not the best...”
I was fixed with a basilisk look. “Hilariously, I was actually...”
“... talking about Pip. Is this just you or is this behaviour...?”
“... starting to get a bit frigging mental?”
I pondered. “I’m going to choose to use the word ‘inconsistent,’ if that’s all right with you, pal?”
P’s head inclined graciously.
I shook my head a little, gently biting my lip. “I reckon you guys need to actually speak - you know, person-to-person at some normal damned time of day.
“And before you say anything,” I said, louder, with finger upraised, as P drew breath, “about 2am being a perfectly normal time of day for you and so on, just...” I faltered... “just don’t, okay?” I looked away, then looked back at P. “You know what I mean, eh?”
P blinked slowly, fully and reluctantly cognisant. Sighed softly. “Yeah,” slowly.
“Now here’s my new plan,” I said briskly. “How about we don’t talk about this new and complicated addition to your love life until we actually know what category they fit into?”
P started to grin. I grinned back.
Idiot.
“Okay,” said P, “let’s talk about yours.”
“Oh, P, now...”
The two friends walk along, at a rubato pace, becoming gradually louder. P, tall and lanky, slightly ungainly for once, gestures grandiloquently with those endless arms, sporting a wicked smile, clearly scoring points. J, much shorter, years of exercise having trimmed her to a deceptively muscular kind of stocky, displays increasingly fewer facial expressions, her gestures smaller, becoming less frequent.
“What about whatsername?”
“Eh?”
“You know.”
“I don’t suppose you fancy narrowing it down for me?”
“Dooberywotsit - yanno, the small, black, cute butch one?”
“Oh... her... yeah...”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Come on - that had potential.”
“The fuck it did!”
“Sure it did!”
“No way!”
“Obbut... and she was hot.”
“That I’ll concede, definitely. But no.”
“Ah, what?”
“No way.”
“I’m telling ya.”
“And I’m telling yer - no.”
“You had chemistry, definitely.”
“That was just a... you know, a forbidden fruit thing.”
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, it was just the impossibility - created a tension that probably wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”
“My arse.”
“Yee-ah!”
“Forbidden... forbidden how?”
“What, you don’t think?”
“Dude, she was so butch I thought she was a boy.”
“No... Jesus...”
“I don’t mean like ugh” big arms “butch, I mean like...”
“She was chivalrous.”
“Yeah... that’s the word - gentlemanly. And queer as fuck.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t gay,” I said, slowly.
“So what’s this ‘forbidden’ stuff?”
“Oh, okay,” I said, throwing my hands up, “you’re right - what was I thinking?”
“Zackly.” P’s ability to spot subtle non-verbal cues reduces in direct proportion to the amount of gin consumed.
“Apart from the fact that I worked with her dad...”
“Pshaw!” P’s dismissive gesticulation resulted in a skin-of-the-teeth rescue of full body balance.
“... the religious zealot...?”
“Oh, come on...”
“Oh, well, yeah, on top of being a lay preacher, also, not the most women’s lib kinda guy in the world, you remember me saying...?”
P looks blank.
J sighs. “About what he said about women in the workplace...?”
“Oh fuck, was this ‘Women shouldn’t work after they’re married.’ fella?”
“Yeah.”
“But what about if...”
“‘Any man who can’t provide for his wife is a failure as a man.’”
“You worked there how long?”
“Too long.”
“Eh.” A pause “Hnh, I take it he didn’t know...”
“Er, no.”
“Fair play.”
“I mean, though, apart from which he was an all right boss.”
“Mmmph.” P’s expression was only just shy of a sneer.
“And on top of all that I was seeing someone anyway.”
“Jesus, like she counted.”
“P!”
“’sides, not like you stayed together anyway.”
“Evidently.”
“So why...?”
“By that point she was seeing someone.”
“She was seeing a married woman!”
“We only have rumour to verify that. Anyway: and?”
There was a pause. “Are you sure,” said P, horrifyingly, wickedly slowly: “that it wasn’t the R-word that prevented you from getting in there...?”
I gazed up at P’s face, frowning, mouthing R-word slowly a couple of times until it dawned.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, P!”
“No?”
“No. Or, well, you know, clearly I’m an idiot. Sorry - a racist idiot who should have had an affair with a woman with whom I only have unspoken chemistry to support the notion that she even vaguely thinks of me that way, either while I was seeing someone, or while she was seeing someone, either way under the nose of her patriarchal, fervently religious, probably homophobic, chauvinistic, possibly racist father upon whose goodwill I essentially depended in order to be able to eat. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, then.”
“I just meant...”
“You might well have done, but the universe would have meant something else.”
“Right.”
“See?”
Eyes closed, “I give,” said P firmly, “the fuck up.”
“Thank you.”
“Moron.”
“Interfering fuckwit,” I muttered, less sotto voce than perhaps it should have been.
“Nice.”
“Good job you love me.” I grinned belatedly, attempting cheeky.
“Munter.”
“P!” Pause. “Huh.” Pause. “Tosspot.”
“Twat.”
“Ach! Egregious fool.”
“Heinous eejit.”
“Piss-artist.”
“Dull prat.”
“Useless git.”
“Torpid idiot.”
“Nah, you’ve had that one.”
“Never.”
“Heinous...?” I circled my hand forward, eyebrows raised to encourage recollection.
Pause. Finally: “That was eejit.”
“What?!” I hadn’t been that high-pitched in years. “Pedantic motherfucker, it’s the same word.”
“Fucking isn’t.”
“Fucking is.”
“Fucking isn’t.”
“Is so.”
“For Jesus’ sake,” said a voice from above, “will you shut. The fuck. Up?”
“No,” said P, gazing upwards, leaning back unsteadily, “but I’ll do it for a KitKat.”
The voice took a while to process this.
“Cunt,” it said, after reflection.
“Fuck off!” said the pair of us in unison, and I grabbed P’s arm and hauled mightily to prevent convoluted scatological ire being flung upwards in further retribution.
Apparently swearing is indicative of an impoverished vocabulary.
Mendacious bollocks if you ask me.
“Must have been blind as a fucking bat to think her a boy, anyway - she was beautiful.”
“You know me, darling. Gender’s not exactly my strong point.”
“Point.”
P’s left eyebrow arched. “Zackly.”
We stumbled on.