Friends Like Us Read Online Free PDF Page B

names.”
    Ben grins, looks quickly around the room. “The twins. Their names.” His gaze settles on the bookshelf. “Um … Biff.” He shrugs again, a habit he seems to have picked up over the last seven years, the slouchy, unassuming gesture of someone who doesn’t understand the high-voltage power of his good looks. He’s still smiling. “Biff and, you know … Happy. We call him Hap.”
    I stand up and walk back into the kitchen, which is really part of the living room, which is more or less the same thing as the dining room. I hold up a mug; Ben nods. “Biff and Hap! Hmmm, I bet they’re a handful,” I say as I pour Ben a cup of coffee and bring it to him. “I bet they require a lot of attention. ”
    “Attention must be paid,” he says, and winks, an exaggerated facial contortion, a sort of this-is-not-a-wink wink. So much of our friendship in high school involved plucking out memorable lines from the literature of our AP English class and quoting them back to each other as punch lines, the inside jokes of the supremely nerdy. I’m surprised by how much this game still comforts me, how easily I can slip back into our script.
    “I’m going to get dressed. I look forward to hearing more about your three ex-wives.” With his free hand, Ben salutes me.
    I wonder how long we’ll be able to keep this up, this skimming, gliding dance we’re doing. In my room, I rummage in the closet for my best jeans and find them on the floor, pull them on with the blue sweater that Jane admired the other day.
    I rub ChapStick on my lips and drag my fingers through my hair in a futile attempt to create a flowing mane out of a Brillo Pad. I try to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window next to my bed, but all I can see are the bare arms of a silver maple brushing against the side of the building. Two squirrels dash madly along the branches in hot pursuit of one another. Squirrels are at the top of the list of things that scare me, even before bats with rabies. It’s the way they live among us. You never know if they’re going to change their minds. I sketch them sometimes and imagine their secret lives, the way they probably plot against us but then get distracted by acorns.
    I look up, past the tree, at the only square of sky visible from anywhere in this apartment, and there’s the moon, too, even though it’s the middle of the day, a blurry smudge in the bright blue sky, faint but unmistakable. Maybe I’ll walk back out into the living room and tell Ben, gently, to go home; maybe this is the part where I explain to him that unrequited love is one thing, but to leave a friendship comatose for seven years is to give it up for dead.
    When I emerge, Ben is staring into his mug of coffee, his face serious.
    “Ben?”
    “You know I am not a fan of sincerity,” he says. There’s a small rip just below the left knee of his jeans, and he worries it, plays at the fraying denim. “So I’m going to say this quickly.”
    I think about the way those squirrels chased each other, switching places at what looked like a predetermined moment, so that the chaser suddenly became the chasee. We are the squirrels!
    “You don’t have to say anything,” I say. My voice is, unexpectedly, squeaky.
    “No, but, of course I do.”
    “Is it about the twins? Is there a problem with the twins? Are they Siamese ?” Just two minutes ago, all I wanted was something real between us, something quiet and true, and now I can’t shut up about the twins. I twist my hair nervously.
    He sighs. “Yes, they are Siamese twins. Now please let me talk. I shouldn’t have cut you out of my life. You know me … or, you knew me, and you know that I didn’t really have a handle on … well, I wasn’t sure how to … be an adult …”
    “But we weren’t.” I want to sit down, but suddenly every available chair seems wrong. The armchair? Too close. A kitchen chair? Too far away. I grip my hands behind my back and list a little bit,