Her eyes slowly open, squinting at the bright light coming from her computer monitor. The periwinkle-background screen displays a scrolling text in bright yellow, the Proverb of the Week. A quick tap at her mouse causes the screen saver to vanish, bringing back Diana’s manuscript. Sitting meekly at the top of the page is the lone third of a page of text that Diana has conquered today before her unexpected catnap. “I need a break.” She checks her watch. It’s nearly one o’clock.
Lunch sounds good, Diana thinks. She walks into the kitchen, completely ignoring the mail on the counter, not even throwing away the junk mail. The refrigerator hasn’t much in it. Well, it actually has plenty, but nothing looks good. Pantry’s a lost cause, too. Diana looks at the dry-erase calendar on the refrigerator door. It is filled with schedules of events for the kids. “Well, I guess Diana’s going out to eat today.” The kids are gone, playing with the neighbors for the day. Almost feeling guilty about it, Diana grabs her cell phone and throws it in her purse.
“I feel like Italian,” Diana says aloud, with a kind of confidence to her voice. She compulsively checks the message light of her answering machine, and sees the note she’s scribbled to herself: Finish your letter to Christopher!
The “letter” is the regular correspondence that she has with Christopher. A true writer, Diana starts by hand-writing her letters. The final draft is often a mess of mark-outs in several colors, with attachments and asterisks whose footnotes sometimes are whole new pages of writing, often an extra story that needed to be added. From there it is typewritten and sent off. Diana is pretty sure Christopher just types them. He’s a computer programmer after all. She has seen him type entire pages of texts or programs with his eyes closed. To keep it from feeling too distant, they agreed never to edit more than once and any proofreading was to be done the first time. It was a silly rule, but it worked. The expectation of raw humor that comes from seeing the other’s address in the top, left-hand corner of an envelope is always fulfilled after the letter is read. Laughter is heard, and the sun shines brighter. It’s official, I write too much poetry.
Truthfully, at times, she feels as if she knows Christopher better than she knows Corey. While Diana is good friends with the women at church and the mothers of Gloria’s playmates, Christopher is really that best friend, who, for most women in her situation, would be female, the “gal pal.” But the coed friendship worked for both of them. She knows Christopher to be on the shy side, but slowly progressing. Ever so slowly, she jokes to herself. But he has opened up to her, and she has returned the favor.
Inspired, she picks up the phone and dials one of the many memorized numbers. Corey had programmed it into the phone’s memory long ago, but Diana never messes with too much technical stuff. The VCR would be blinking 12:00 forever if Gloria wasn’t so clever. It would be great if she could tell time, then it would blink the correct time, instead of thirteen minutes behind
“Hello?” the familiar male voice answers.
“Hey, Christopher,” Diana replies.
The voice answers cheerily, “Hey, Diana, what’s going on?”
“You had lunch, yet?”
“No, I got wrapped up in—”
“…your programs, I know. It’s all you ever do,” Diana replies, smirking, “I’ve got a serious hankering for Italian. You up?”
“Yeah, Italian sounds good,”
* * *
Christopher walks in and sits down. Diana smiles at his faded jeans and wrinkled blue button-down, unbuttoned, over a white tee-shirt. His dark brown hair is long on all sides, but combed so not to look unkempt. Diana smiles, “You look like an unmarried computer programmer.”
“I am an unmarried computer programmer,” he replies, rehearsed.
Orders taken, Diana shakes her head, “You should get married,”
“I know I should. I want to. I’d love to. And so would my mom. I didn’t count on…”
“…splitting with Laura,” Diana finishes. She actually meant to start the conversation out gaily, but they were going down that road again. Christopher had met Laura Dale, an Education major/Spanish minor, at
“I didn’t mean to start like this,” Diana apologizes after several moments of silence.
“No, it’s okay. Life goes on. I mean, who actually gets the life they planned?”
“I did,” Diana replies. Christopher opens his mouth to refute her, but remains silent, twisting his lips in a pensive glare. “Well, not completely, but pretty close, I have to admit.”
“So, how’s Corey?” Christopher asks quickly, finding the tables turned.
“Corey’s Corey. It’s all he’s ever been,”
“I meant, how is he doing?” Christopher asks, without cheer and with concern.
“Oh, fine. Work’s great. He’s happy. The kids are great.”
Christopher regretfully asks, with a grave tone, “Diana, what’s going on?”
Diana opens her mouth to reply, but is saved by the server giving them their plates. Diana quickly takes a bit of ravioli Alfredo.
“Diana…” Christopher repeats concerned, not picking up his fork. He glared at her, challenging.
“Christopher,” Diana begins as her friend finally reaches for his fork, “why didn’t things work out between you and Laura?” she asks in a conjecturing tone, “I know you lived far apart, but whatever happened to love conquering all?”
“This isn’t about me…” he refutes.
Diana puts her hand up and tells him, “I need somewhere to start from. Why couldn’t you make it work?”
“Diana, it wasn’t about making it work. We knew how to make it work. They say the secret to marriage is finding the right person and being the right person. In most, almost all, cases, somebody is not being the right person. In my case, it was the other. Laura was wonderful. She was caring and thoughtful and everything anyone could ask for, but we didn’t complement each other. Not in the sense of telling each other how great the other was, we didn’t have… friction.”
The word pulls a thought from deep within Diana’s memory. Way back when the two of them went to high school together, Diana remembers his theory of relationships. His use of the word “friction” signified the teasing and playful conflict that went on between dating couples. He had noticed that lovey-dovey relationship usually fade away, but “frictional” relationships, as he called them, were the kind that survived longer. They ended with “breakups,” messy breakups… clear, distinct points in when the relationship was over. It was dynamic that Christopher loved to comprehend, but was weary to participate in. He found a nice girl (whose name Diana can no longer recall) in high school that entered into a sort of symbiotic relationship with. Christopher, being completely inept in the world of dating, was her pupil of sorts. For her, it was really just a convenient date to dances. Though it didn’t last into junior year, they ended up going to senior prom together, as friends. With the prospect of college on the horizon, quite a few relationships in his social circle fell apart, and many couples ended up going “as friends.” Laura was the opposite of that girl, lacking expertise as Christopher did, and she supposes that’s what attracted Christopher to her. She made the relationship easy, and so did Christopher. The facts of the matter came crashing down afterwards.
“Faded away…” Diana mumbles to herself, “You said your engagement with Laura faded away, right?”
“Yes, it did. I’ve told you this before. She didn’t want to shop for a dress, for flowers. It didn’t feel right to either of us anymore. She was a great person, and we were in love, maybe falling out, but… but it wasn’t… stimulating… amusing,”
Diana laughs at “amusing.” He uses the word a lot; it’s the quality he looks for in friends and lovers. Etymology is one of his hobbies, and he told her that the original meaning of the word was more like “inspiring.” Finding this odd, she looked it up, and without reading the definition saw that he was right. Take away the “a,” from “amuse” and you get “muse.”
“Why would you not get with someone that you didn’t have friction with?” Diana asks.
“You don’t think like that when you’re in love. You’re just so happy…”
“I know what you mean. But, I guess no friction, no longevity…”
“No, it’s more than that. There has to be… roles,” he says, contemplatively.
“What do you mean?”
“I told you this freshman year. I read this book about gender roles. Men instinctively enjoy adventure. They want something to fight for, someone. Women want to be desired. It gets warped out of context, but the bottom line is that we’re all wild at heart. We tame ourselves, we starve our souls. What does this have to do with you and Corey?” Christopher asks, abruptly changing the subject, feeling Diana veering away.
“Lately, I’ve been wondering about us. He’s a great person, and we’re in love, but it’s just not… stimulating?”
Christopher lets out a deep sigh, “Diana, I don’t know what you’re considering, but… I knew Laura was not right for me. If you’re… Whatever happens, I’ll be here for you, but I don’t want you to… Figure this out, Diana, ‘cause this is big…”
How the conversation continued beyond this is beyond Diana’s comprehension. Years of putting her words on paper made Diana apt at speaking her mind. Christopher, usually quiet, spent the better part of his college years forcing himself into social situations. It gave him the same skill. Their conversation at lunch just happened. But there was no growth, no insight, no connection, as Diana realized long afterwards. They looked at each other, but almost through each other, between bites of food. There wasn’t any awkwardness; they’d been friends too long, but the words were lost moments after they were spoken.
Diana was almost surprised when she found herself at home again, so lost in her thoughts.
* * *
Corey just sits in the chair, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Diana sits across from him in the loveseat, her eyes, too, wet and her cheeks tear-streaked.
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