"So, how's the hunt for the new assistant going?" Richard asked, taking a sip of his wine.
Rachel brushed a piece of hair back. "Ah, it's good... I'm done, actually. I went with this lady named Hilda, she's amazing. I don't have to remember *anything* anymore."
"You should have seen the scrumptious thing she didn't hire," Phoebe giggled, reaching for a breadstick.
Richard wiggled his eyebrows. "Scrumptious, huh?"
"When he walked in, I thought he was looking for the model area," Rachel laughed. "I ended up walking him over there. I think they're using him for the Spring Catalog."
"I can't believe you didn't hire him," Phoebe gushed. "I mean, talk about spicing up your workday."
"Oh c'mon... his relevant experience was housepainting. It'd be different if he were really interested in a career in fashion, but he just wanted a job. He'll get a lot more money modeling than he would typing my memos."
"But you've got his resume, right? So you've got his phone number?"
"Sheesh, Pheebs. I mean, he's pretty, but he's..." she looked down at her shrimp and mumbled, "Not my type, I guess."
"Well, whatever, Rachel, but he can 'Tag' me anytime," Phoebe laughed. At Richard's look, she kissed his cheek. "Just kidding... lo-ver."
Monica groaned loudly.
"Gee... whatever's the matter, honey?" Chandler asked, sarcasm dripping.
"Ah... this cream sauce," Monica lied weakly. "It's just... hello, oregano's a seasoning, not a main ingredient."
Awkward silence fell around the table, as everyone pretended to be extremely interested in their food.
Monica poked her pasta miserably, watching everyone else studiously looking elsewhere. Only Wendy was making eye contact, looking around the table from poker face to poker face in confusion. Wendy leaned back and whispered something in Ross' ear; when he returned the favor, she shot the briefest of glances at Monica before joining the other seven in looking preoccupied with her plate.
Great. Now Wendy thought she was psycho. And from the looks Chandler was shooting her, it seemed like that opinion was going around.
Was she being that blatantly obvious? She'd tried so hard to cover up how this Richard and Phoebe thing was killing her... she'd even suggested the eight of them go out to dinner.
Losing Richard years ago had been bad enough, but this... this was excruciating. Phoebe's hand on his arm, the little private laughter, the looks that shot between them... every one was like a punch in the stomach.
And god, poor Chandler. He definitely knew something was up, and she didn't know what to do.
She loved Chandler, she did. But now, sitting at the table with him and Richard, what she felt for Chandler was like... a wine cooler. And Richard was like straight scotch in a tall glass. It had been so long since she'd really experienced being drunk, she'd managed to convince herself she was drunk when in fact she was barely tipsy.
What she and Chandler had was warm, and familiar, and homey. But sitting in between him and Richard, Chandler paled and receded.
Richard's glances burned. Just looking at his face made a slow flush creep up her neck... the entire dinner had been one torturous, amazing, wonderful sensation after another. The all-over body sparkles when their hands had accidentally touched over the breadsticks. The aching warmth, the need, spreading over her body when their knees touched under the table. It was like every molecule in his body was calling out to hers, and it took effort not to gulp the air that carried the scent of his cologne and the deeper, never-forgotten smell of him.
She had forgotten. She had forgotten the fog of heat, the brain-obliterating need to be near someone. She was attracted to Chandler, sure... when he touched her, her body responded, the sex was very, very good. But with Chandler, sex was something they did.
With Richard... with Richard, sex had been almost an afterthought, not so much an activity as a natural consequence of desperately trying to get as close to him as humanly possible.
Did he have that with Phoebe? Was this total meltdown she was feeling, the humid, sticky haze that seemed to hang between her and Richard, totally one-sided, a product of her imagination?
She tentatively moved her right leg until it pressed lightly against Richard's. He sucked in air involuntarily, and his fork nearly fell out of his hand.
Interesting.
Now her left leg, sliding over and pressing gently into Chandler's thigh. He turned to her and raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry, Mon, was I crowding you?"
He scooted his chair a little closer to Joey and turned his attention back to his plate.
Monica wrung her napkin in both hands. She knew she was in a bad situation, poised on the edge of a terrible mistake.
The question was... which decision was the mistake?
***
Chandler squirmed through the window on the balcony and sat cross-legged against the brick. He could hear the sounds of the traffic, his neighbors, the music inside, and forced his mind to zoom to the individuals behind the noise. The woman in the window, washing dishes... what was she thinking about? That child that was screaming... why?
But even one of his favorite mind-games couldn't distract him for long. He shoved a loose brick aside, pulled out a pack of cigarettes from behind it, and lit one.
Good god. So stale. He coughed a little and examined the cylinder in his hand. If things kept being this insane, he was going to run through his depressed-and-thinking cigarettes a hell of a lot faster than two packs a year.
Of course, Monica would kill him if she caught him smoking, but she was covering dinner shift this week. Thank god -- if he'd had to spend another night at Central Perk watching her watching Richard, he'd swallow his own tongue.
And this recent thing... god. What planet did Monica live on? Did she know him at all? As if her Richard mentionitis wasn't hurtful enough, she had their engagement pictures taken with Joey?
Because Chandler just wasn't good-looking enough to be in *Monica's* engagement photo.
Monica's perfect engagement photo, of her perfect engagement, of her perfect life... that he didn't seem to be a participant in anymore.
This month had been almost complete hell. If it hadn't been for Rachel, he'd have gone insane. The guys were on other planets... Ross was giddy, spending every waking minute with Wendy, and on the rare moments Chandler saw him detached, Ross was so estatic Chandler hated to bring him down.
And Joey... well, something was wrong with him, but he wouldn't talk to Chandler about it. Chandler had tried opening up about him and Monica, both to get it out and to prompt a confidence from Joey... but not only had Joey remained tight-lipped, he'd barely paid attention.
Phoebe was up Richard's butt, and Monica... Monica was nuts.
When she wasn't ignoring him, she was treating him like a puppy who piddled on the carpet at the dog show. It was worse than the time she'd felt the need to "beat" Phoebe and Gary at being the hottest... at least then he'd gotten sex.
Chandler really thought he'd experienced the most inadequate he could feel, but this past month had been a revelation of new lows. All the things about him Monica used to find at least endearing... his fumbled jokes, his clumsy mistakes, his knack of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time... all earned him the steeliest of glares. And that was just in public. In private, she let her opinions out.
"Grow up, Chandler. Be serious, Chandler," he said aloud in a sing-song voice.
He ground his cigarette into the concrete. "Who the hell does she think I am?"
Then, quieter: "Who the hell does she want me to be?"
He thought he knew the answer to that one.
He knew Monica was competitive... it was something about her he'd accepted a long time ago. But this... this was ridiculous. Everything Richard and Phoebe did, they had to do, but they had to do it better. It was like he was a Ken doll that she dragged around, screeching "Look how happy I am without you, Richard!"
If a Ken doll could talk, and drop things, and ruin it for her.
He tried to understand, he really did. He remembered running into Janice one night, when she was out to dinner with Gary. He'd been walking with Joey, scarfing Doritos, in need of a shower, wearing his last-day-before-I-have-to-do-laundry clothes... and had immediately wished that he'd looked amazing and had been discussing astrophysics while Cindy Crawford hung on his every word.
But he also remembered running into Kathy last year, when he'd been with Monica... and how proud he'd been to be with Monica, how he hadn't felt that need to be in a tux with a supermodel... because he was with Monica.
Chandler had to face facts: he was only good enough for Monica... when Richard wasn't looking.
So much for Rachel's theory that having Richard around all the time was actually a good thing. Rachel had been convinced that Monica had put Richard on a pedestal when they broke up, and that having Richard around all the time would bring her back to reality and make her appreciate Chandler more.
Yeah, not so much.
Chandler considered Rachel and had to let out a little rueful laugh. She'd changed so much since she moved in with Joey... it was like a whole other side of her had been unlocked.
He supposed it could have something to do with being able to throw spaghetti on the floor, but in his heart, he knew that wasn't it.
Joey was so sweet, so easy-going, so... unconditionally adoring. Rachel had gone from living with Monica, where she could do almost no right, to Joey's, where she could do no wrong.
And slowly but surely, a lot of what he'd always thought he knew about Rachel was rubbing off of her, revealing unexpected things underneath... and he found himself wondering how much of what he'd always assumed was ever really Rachel at all.
She'd gone from pleasing her parents to pleasing Barry and their friends, to pleasing Monica...
And while Rachel was blossoming... what the hell was happening to him?
He heard a car door bang below and familiar voices drifted up to him. He poked his head out over the railing.
Richard and Phoebe, coming home from their date. Chandler watched as Richard opened the cab door for her, pulling her up gracefully by one hand, effortlessly shutting the door with the other before bringing Phoebe's hand up to his lips for a chaste kiss. If Chandler had tried to do that for Monica, he would have tripped over something, or accidentally shut her dress in the door...
The wind changed, and now he could hear their voices clearly.
"You are so smooth," Phoebe was giggling. "How'd you get to be so smooth?"
Richard laughed, that full, easy laugh Chandler could never pull off. "You want the truth? I used to watch old movies and practice in the mirror."
"You didn't."
"No, I seriously did. My best friend Felicity, she was a huge movie buff. Sometimes, we'd practice some of that stuff together, you know. I'd be Cary Grant, she'd be Katharine Hepburn... I'd be Jimmy Stewart, she'd be Grace Kelly. I can still do the two cigarette trick from 'Now, Voyager'."
Another shift in the wind, and their voices were gone. Chandler settled back against the wall, smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening to the muffled sounds of the cd he'd put on before coming out here.
"Creep" faded into "Boys Don't Cry", followed by "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Gee, what could have been on his mind when he burned this?
When Ian Curtis was done bumming him out, Tori Amos took over.
"Maybe she's just pieces of me you've never seen..."
Chandler sat upright, eyes wide.
He had an idea, and he knew who could help him.
------------------
To be continued...
Rachel brushed a piece of hair back. "Ah, it's good... I'm done, actually. I went with this lady named Hilda, she's amazing. I don't have to remember *anything* anymore."
"You should have seen the scrumptious thing she didn't hire," Phoebe giggled, reaching for a breadstick.
Richard wiggled his eyebrows. "Scrumptious, huh?"
"When he walked in, I thought he was looking for the model area," Rachel laughed. "I ended up walking him over there. I think they're using him for the Spring Catalog."
"I can't believe you didn't hire him," Phoebe gushed. "I mean, talk about spicing up your workday."
"Oh c'mon... his relevant experience was housepainting. It'd be different if he were really interested in a career in fashion, but he just wanted a job. He'll get a lot more money modeling than he would typing my memos."
"But you've got his resume, right? So you've got his phone number?"
"Sheesh, Pheebs. I mean, he's pretty, but he's..." she looked down at her shrimp and mumbled, "Not my type, I guess."
"Well, whatever, Rachel, but he can 'Tag' me anytime," Phoebe laughed. At Richard's look, she kissed his cheek. "Just kidding... lo-ver."
Monica groaned loudly.
"Gee... whatever's the matter, honey?" Chandler asked, sarcasm dripping.
"Ah... this cream sauce," Monica lied weakly. "It's just... hello, oregano's a seasoning, not a main ingredient."
Awkward silence fell around the table, as everyone pretended to be extremely interested in their food.
Monica poked her pasta miserably, watching everyone else studiously looking elsewhere. Only Wendy was making eye contact, looking around the table from poker face to poker face in confusion. Wendy leaned back and whispered something in Ross' ear; when he returned the favor, she shot the briefest of glances at Monica before joining the other seven in looking preoccupied with her plate.
Great. Now Wendy thought she was psycho. And from the looks Chandler was shooting her, it seemed like that opinion was going around.
Was she being that blatantly obvious? She'd tried so hard to cover up how this Richard and Phoebe thing was killing her... she'd even suggested the eight of them go out to dinner.
Losing Richard years ago had been bad enough, but this... this was excruciating. Phoebe's hand on his arm, the little private laughter, the looks that shot between them... every one was like a punch in the stomach.
And god, poor Chandler. He definitely knew something was up, and she didn't know what to do.
She loved Chandler, she did. But now, sitting at the table with him and Richard, what she felt for Chandler was like... a wine cooler. And Richard was like straight scotch in a tall glass. It had been so long since she'd really experienced being drunk, she'd managed to convince herself she was drunk when in fact she was barely tipsy.
What she and Chandler had was warm, and familiar, and homey. But sitting in between him and Richard, Chandler paled and receded.
Richard's glances burned. Just looking at his face made a slow flush creep up her neck... the entire dinner had been one torturous, amazing, wonderful sensation after another. The all-over body sparkles when their hands had accidentally touched over the breadsticks. The aching warmth, the need, spreading over her body when their knees touched under the table. It was like every molecule in his body was calling out to hers, and it took effort not to gulp the air that carried the scent of his cologne and the deeper, never-forgotten smell of him.
She had forgotten. She had forgotten the fog of heat, the brain-obliterating need to be near someone. She was attracted to Chandler, sure... when he touched her, her body responded, the sex was very, very good. But with Chandler, sex was something they did.
With Richard... with Richard, sex had been almost an afterthought, not so much an activity as a natural consequence of desperately trying to get as close to him as humanly possible.
Did he have that with Phoebe? Was this total meltdown she was feeling, the humid, sticky haze that seemed to hang between her and Richard, totally one-sided, a product of her imagination?
She tentatively moved her right leg until it pressed lightly against Richard's. He sucked in air involuntarily, and his fork nearly fell out of his hand.
Interesting.
Now her left leg, sliding over and pressing gently into Chandler's thigh. He turned to her and raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry, Mon, was I crowding you?"
He scooted his chair a little closer to Joey and turned his attention back to his plate.
Monica wrung her napkin in both hands. She knew she was in a bad situation, poised on the edge of a terrible mistake.
The question was... which decision was the mistake?
***
Chandler squirmed through the window on the balcony and sat cross-legged against the brick. He could hear the sounds of the traffic, his neighbors, the music inside, and forced his mind to zoom to the individuals behind the noise. The woman in the window, washing dishes... what was she thinking about? That child that was screaming... why?
But even one of his favorite mind-games couldn't distract him for long. He shoved a loose brick aside, pulled out a pack of cigarettes from behind it, and lit one.
Good god. So stale. He coughed a little and examined the cylinder in his hand. If things kept being this insane, he was going to run through his depressed-and-thinking cigarettes a hell of a lot faster than two packs a year.
Of course, Monica would kill him if she caught him smoking, but she was covering dinner shift this week. Thank god -- if he'd had to spend another night at Central Perk watching her watching Richard, he'd swallow his own tongue.
And this recent thing... god. What planet did Monica live on? Did she know him at all? As if her Richard mentionitis wasn't hurtful enough, she had their engagement pictures taken with Joey?
Because Chandler just wasn't good-looking enough to be in *Monica's* engagement photo.
Monica's perfect engagement photo, of her perfect engagement, of her perfect life... that he didn't seem to be a participant in anymore.
This month had been almost complete hell. If it hadn't been for Rachel, he'd have gone insane. The guys were on other planets... Ross was giddy, spending every waking minute with Wendy, and on the rare moments Chandler saw him detached, Ross was so estatic Chandler hated to bring him down.
And Joey... well, something was wrong with him, but he wouldn't talk to Chandler about it. Chandler had tried opening up about him and Monica, both to get it out and to prompt a confidence from Joey... but not only had Joey remained tight-lipped, he'd barely paid attention.
Phoebe was up Richard's butt, and Monica... Monica was nuts.
When she wasn't ignoring him, she was treating him like a puppy who piddled on the carpet at the dog show. It was worse than the time she'd felt the need to "beat" Phoebe and Gary at being the hottest... at least then he'd gotten sex.
Chandler really thought he'd experienced the most inadequate he could feel, but this past month had been a revelation of new lows. All the things about him Monica used to find at least endearing... his fumbled jokes, his clumsy mistakes, his knack of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time... all earned him the steeliest of glares. And that was just in public. In private, she let her opinions out.
"Grow up, Chandler. Be serious, Chandler," he said aloud in a sing-song voice.
He ground his cigarette into the concrete. "Who the hell does she think I am?"
Then, quieter: "Who the hell does she want me to be?"
He thought he knew the answer to that one.
He knew Monica was competitive... it was something about her he'd accepted a long time ago. But this... this was ridiculous. Everything Richard and Phoebe did, they had to do, but they had to do it better. It was like he was a Ken doll that she dragged around, screeching "Look how happy I am without you, Richard!"
If a Ken doll could talk, and drop things, and ruin it for her.
He tried to understand, he really did. He remembered running into Janice one night, when she was out to dinner with Gary. He'd been walking with Joey, scarfing Doritos, in need of a shower, wearing his last-day-before-I-have-to-do-laundry clothes... and had immediately wished that he'd looked amazing and had been discussing astrophysics while Cindy Crawford hung on his every word.
But he also remembered running into Kathy last year, when he'd been with Monica... and how proud he'd been to be with Monica, how he hadn't felt that need to be in a tux with a supermodel... because he was with Monica.
Chandler had to face facts: he was only good enough for Monica... when Richard wasn't looking.
So much for Rachel's theory that having Richard around all the time was actually a good thing. Rachel had been convinced that Monica had put Richard on a pedestal when they broke up, and that having Richard around all the time would bring her back to reality and make her appreciate Chandler more.
Yeah, not so much.
Chandler considered Rachel and had to let out a little rueful laugh. She'd changed so much since she moved in with Joey... it was like a whole other side of her had been unlocked.
He supposed it could have something to do with being able to throw spaghetti on the floor, but in his heart, he knew that wasn't it.
Joey was so sweet, so easy-going, so... unconditionally adoring. Rachel had gone from living with Monica, where she could do almost no right, to Joey's, where she could do no wrong.
And slowly but surely, a lot of what he'd always thought he knew about Rachel was rubbing off of her, revealing unexpected things underneath... and he found himself wondering how much of what he'd always assumed was ever really Rachel at all.
She'd gone from pleasing her parents to pleasing Barry and their friends, to pleasing Monica...
And while Rachel was blossoming... what the hell was happening to him?
He heard a car door bang below and familiar voices drifted up to him. He poked his head out over the railing.
Richard and Phoebe, coming home from their date. Chandler watched as Richard opened the cab door for her, pulling her up gracefully by one hand, effortlessly shutting the door with the other before bringing Phoebe's hand up to his lips for a chaste kiss. If Chandler had tried to do that for Monica, he would have tripped over something, or accidentally shut her dress in the door...
The wind changed, and now he could hear their voices clearly.
"You are so smooth," Phoebe was giggling. "How'd you get to be so smooth?"
Richard laughed, that full, easy laugh Chandler could never pull off. "You want the truth? I used to watch old movies and practice in the mirror."
"You didn't."
"No, I seriously did. My best friend Felicity, she was a huge movie buff. Sometimes, we'd practice some of that stuff together, you know. I'd be Cary Grant, she'd be Katharine Hepburn... I'd be Jimmy Stewart, she'd be Grace Kelly. I can still do the two cigarette trick from 'Now, Voyager'."
Another shift in the wind, and their voices were gone. Chandler settled back against the wall, smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening to the muffled sounds of the cd he'd put on before coming out here.
"Creep" faded into "Boys Don't Cry", followed by "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Gee, what could have been on his mind when he burned this?
When Ian Curtis was done bumming him out, Tori Amos took over.
"Maybe she's just pieces of me you've never seen..."
Chandler sat upright, eyes wide.
He had an idea, and he knew who could help him.
------------------
To be continued...
