My old friend comes over for dinner. I’ve not seen her for ages. Maybe years. Definitely over a year. A long time, anyways.
“How’s Lucy?” she asks about a mutual friend of ours.
“I don’t know,” I admit, shamefacedly.
“You don’t know?” she asks, totally, kind of like, shell-shocked.
“I haven’t seen her in a year.”
“You haven’t seen her in a year?”
“Well, we kind of fell out.”
“You guys fell out?”
“She fell out with me, anyway.”
“She fell out with you? Why?”
“I kind of wrote a blog about something she’d said. But I changed her name and everything. I never thought she’d notice. And then she fell out with me.”
My old friend sniffs, thoughtfully.
“See,” she says. “That’s why I never read your blog.”
I squint at her sceptically. “When you say never,” I say, totally suspicious, “do you mean like never, ever, ever NEVER?”
“Never,” she says.
“What about when I called all Americans rapists? Or that one about sending Rico to private school? Or that one about Gwyneth Paltrow having her head in a box? You must read it sometimes.”
“I never read it, ever,” she says.
“Never, ever?”
“Never, ever, ever.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I’ve got this friend who reads it though. He really hates you.”
“Is he American?” I ask.
“That’s not why he hates you,” she says.
“Why does he hate me then?” I ask.
She pauses. Then she says, melodramatically: “He thinks you make the quotes up.”
I blink at her, like I’ve just stepped out into the sunlight after the Kino.
“Well, of course I make the quotes up,” I say. “I have to think of something to write every week. And people – you know people – they’re just not that fucking interesting. I have to make the quotes up a little bit. Hey, can I write my next blog about him thinking that I make quotes up?”
My old friend squeals.
“No!” she says. “You’re not allowed to. Okay, Jacinta? Have a bit of fucking respect for once. No wonder Lucy doesn’t speak to you anymore. You’re a fucking monster.”
But after she leaves, I can’t help thinking: well, what the fuck. She never reads it anyways; she’ll never find out.
