Conversations with Friends(6)

After a while Bobbi knocked on the door.

What’s up? she said from outside. Are you okay?

Just period pain.

Oh. You have painkillers in there?

No, I said.

I’ll get you some.

Her footsteps went away. I hit my forehead against the side of the bath to distract myself from the pain in my pelvis. It was a hot pain, like all my insides were contracting into one little knot. The footsteps came back and the bathroom door opened an inch. She slid through a packet of ibuprofen. I crawled over and took them, and she went away.

Eventually it got light outside. Bobbi woke up and came in to help me onto the couch in the living room. She made me a cup of peppermint tea and I sat slouched holding the cup against my T-shirt, just above my pubic bone, until it started to scald me.

You suffer, she said.

Everybody suffers.

Ah, Bobbi said. Profound.

*



I hadn’t been kidding with Philip about not wanting a job. I didn’t want one. I had no plans as to my future financial sustainability: I never wanted to earn money for doing anything. I’d had various minimum-wage jobs in previous summers – sending emails, making cold calls, things like that – and I expected to have more of them after I graduated. Though I knew that I would eventually have to enter full-time employment, I certainly never fantasised about a radiant future where I was paid to perform an economic role. Sometimes this felt like a failure to take an interest in my own life, which depressed me. On the other hand, I felt that my disinterest in wealth was ideologically healthy. I’d checked what the average yearly income would be if the gross world product were divided evenly among everyone, and according to Wikipedia it would be $16,100. I saw no reason, political or financial, ever to make more money than that.

Our boss at the literary agency was a woman named Sunny. Both Philip and I really liked Sunny, but Sunny preferred me. Philip was sanguine about this. He said he preferred me too. I think deep down Sunny knew that I didn’t want a job as a literary agent, and it may even have been this fact that distinguished me in her eyes. Philip was plainly pretty enthused about working for the agency, and though I didn’t judge him for making life plans, I felt like I was more discerning with my enthusiasms.

Sunny was interested in the question of my career. She was a very candid person who was always making refreshingly candid remarks, that was one of the things Philip and I liked most about her.

What about journalism? she asked me.

I was handing her back a pile of completed manuscripts.

You’re interested in the world, she said. You’re knowledgeable. You like politics.

Do I?

She laughed and shook her head.

You’re bright, she said. You’re going to have to do something.

Maybe I’ll marry for money.

She waved me away.

Go and do some work, she said.

*



We were performing at a reading in the centre of town that Friday. I could perform each poem for a period of about six months after I’d written it, after which point I couldn’t stand to look at it, never mind read it aloud in public. I didn’t know what caused this process, but I was glad the poems were only ever performed and never published. They floated away ethereally to the sound of applause. Real writers, and also painters, had to keep on looking at the ugly things they had done for good. I hated that everything I did was so ugly, but also that I lacked the courage to confront how ugly it was. I had explained that theory to Philip but he’d just said: don’t be down on yourself, you’re a real writer.

Bobbi and I were applying make-up in the venue bathrooms and talking about the newest poems I had written.

What I like about your male characters, Bobbi said, is they’re all horrible.

They’re not all horrible.

At best they’re very morally ambiguous.

Aren’t we all? I said.

You should write about Philip, he’s not problematic. He’s ‘nice’.

She did air quotes around the word nice, even though she did really think that about Philip. Bobbi would never describe anyone as nice without quotation marks.

Melissa had said she would come along that night, but we didn’t see her until afterwards, at maybe half ten or eleven o’clock. She and Nick were sitting together, and Nick was wearing a suit. Melissa congratulated us and told us she’d really enjoyed our performance. Bobbi looked at Nick as if waiting for him to compliment us, which made him laugh.

I didn’t see your set, he said. I just got here.

Nick’s in the Royal this month, Melissa said. He’s doing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

But I’m sure you were great, though, he said.

Let me get you both drinks, said Melissa.

Bobbi went with her to the bar, so Nick and I were left alone at the table. He didn’t have a tie on and his suit looked expensive. I felt too hot, and worried I was sweating.

How was the play? I said.

Oh, what, tonight? It was okay, thanks.

He was taking his cufflinks off. He placed them on the table, beside his glass, and I noticed they were coloured enamel, art deco-looking. I thought about admiring them aloud, but then felt unable to. Instead I pretended to look for Melissa and Bobbi over my shoulder. When I turned back he had taken out his phone.

I’d like to see it, I said. I like the play.

You should come along, I can hold tickets for you.