Chapter 9: Strange Behaviour

Author's Note: Just in case anyone notices – at the end of last chapter I deliberately changed the circumstances in which Chandler and Joanna got together again from what happens in the series. More such changes will be apparent below.

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The news that Chandler was dating Joanna reached Rachel by a roundabout route. The first to learn was Joey, who was shambling, half-asleep, towards the bathroom next morning when Chandler, already dressed and seated at the kitchen counter, stopped him.

"Don't go in there, Joe," he said. "Joanna's taking a shower."

"Joanna?" said Joey, swinging round, suddenly wide awake. "That was Joanna with you last night?"

Chandler flushed a little and nodded.

"I was wondering how you'd hooked up," said Joey. "Didn't sound like Janice, but whoever-it-was was calling the shots all right."

Chandler grinned. "Yeah, Joanna likes to boss. But it was fun."

"So – not such a big dull dud, eh?" said Joey. "But I thought you were interested in Rachel."

Chandler pulled a face. "I was, but she's clearly not interested in me." He sounded rather bitter.

Joey looked at him closely. "Aw man, are you using Joanna to get back at her, for first seeming encouraging and then not?"

Chandler looked away.

"Bad move," said Joey. "It'll only make her mad. Remember all that fuss when you dated Joanna the first time. You can't prefer Joanna to Rachel?"

Chandler pulled another face. "No, but … you know what they say about birds and bushes."

Joey looked blank.

Chandler sighed. "The old proverb: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

Joey still looked blank.

Chandler sighed more emphatically. "It means, if you've got something, it's worth a lot more than what you might get."

Enlightenment dawned. "Yeah, but … do you see this thing with Joanna going anywhere?" said Joey dubiously.

Chandler cocked an ear towards the bathroom. The sound of the shower had stopped.

"It's too soon to say," he muttered.

Just then the bathroom door came out, and Joanna emerged, wrapped in a towel.

"Morning," she said brusquely to Joey, and moved hastily to Chandler's bedroom.

Joey looked after her. "Rachel's worth … six of her," he commented. "Well, is it okay if I tell the others?"

Chandler smiled just a little maliciously. "Yeah, go ahead. Let me know how Rachel takes it."

"I'm disappointed in you, man," said Joey, and went into the bathroom. While there, he pondered how best to break it to Rachel. Never one to use subtlety, he decided to do it over breakfast, on the assumption that Chandler and Joanna wouldn't show up in Monica's apartment. Indeed, when he left the bathroom, Chandler had made coffee and was cooking Joanna pancakes. Joey dressed hurriedly and went over.

"Hey, Joe!" said Rachel, who was sitting at the table, looking entrancingly neat in her business clothes, while Monica moved around the kitchen area in an old t-shirt and jeans. "What's new? Where's Chandler?"

"Um, well, that's what's new," said Joey. "He's, er, in our apartment, making breakfast for Joanna."

"For Joanna?" Rachel and Monica chorused in amazement.

"Uh huh," said Joey, looking at Rachel particularly. "She was … there overnight."

For a moment Joey was sure he saw pain in Rachel's eyes. "Oh crap," she said heavily and looked away.

Monica was gazing at her anxiously. "I'm so sorry, sweetie," she stammered.

Rachel sighed. "It's okay, Mon. It's not your fault. No one could have predicted this. Janice, maybe – that I could understand – but this!!" She got up and went to take a tissue. "Goddam loose eyelashes," she said over her shoulder in a slightly shaky voice as she dabbed at her eyes.

Joey felt sympathetic. Evidently she did have feelings for Chandler, but for some reason had not been showing it. Anxious to change the subject, he remembered something.

"Hey, your date with Pete!" he said excitedly to Monica. "How did that go?"

"It was going … well," said Monica cautiously. "Until, um, Richard showed up."

"Oh Mon!" Joey groaned, sitting down and helping himself to cereal. "So, was he interested?"

Monica eagerly launched into a complete dissection of Richard's behaviour. Rachel joined in with supporting comments after a while, and then Phoebe arrived and the whole topic had to be gone over again. Anyone could see that Monica was really excited about this development.

"Joey," said Rachel eventually, "would you check if Joanna's still in your apartment? Because if she is, I don't see why I should bust my ass getting to work."

"Joanna's over there?" said Phoebe with a look of great interest.

"Yeah," said Joey. "She was with Chandler last night."

Phoebe looked at Rachel, who was gazing at the tabletop with a strained expression. She reached across and patted Rachel on the shoulder, but said nothing.

"Rach, if you want to get one over on Joanna, you should get to work before her," said Monica. "Then when she shows up you can ask if she got held up on the subway or something."

Rachel smiled at her. "Good thinking. So, linguine this evening?"

"Yup," said Monica, "and my own marinara sauce. And because this won't take much work, you shall have a surprise starter and dessert."

Rachel grinned vividly and rushed off to clean her teeth.

"Why's she getting special food?" asked Joey in an aggrieved tone.

Monica and Phoebe looked at each other. "If you tell him, he'll only tell Chandler," said Phoebe.

Joey became suspicious. "This all has something to do with you and Chandler, doesn't it?" he said to Monica.

Monica sighed, "Yeah," but didn't elaborate. Joey looked enquiringly at Phoebe, who grinned and shook her head.

"It's no use your making eyes at me, Joey Tribbiani," she said firmly. "I'm not telling their secrets."

"Good for you, Pheebs," said Rachel as she came through. "Well, see you guys later."

Joey decided to take the bull by the horns. He followed her and called, "Hey, Rach," as she was nearly at the head of the stairs. She turned back.

"Look, what is it between you and Chandler?" he said in frustration.

She only looked at him for a moment, but he thought she seemed sad. "Nothing, now," she said, before hurrying away.

Joey felt sure this was not true, but was otherwise no clearer about what was going on. He shrugged and returned to his own apartment, to find Joanna sitting on Chandler's lap and gazing fondly into his eyes. Chandler was looking a bit uncomfortable, but that might be because Joanna was no lightweight. Quite unfazed, she got off Chandler's knee to sit on a stool and looked calmly at Joey.

"You must be Joey," she said. "You're an actor, Chandler says."

Joey gave her his practised grin. "I certainly am. Maybe you remember me as Dr. Drake Ramoray." When she looked blank, he added, "In Days Of Our Lives."

"Of course!" she cried. "I knew I'd seen you somewhere." Her eyes twinkled. "You were hot in that; why ever did they kill you off? But weren't you also in some advertisement that was plastered all over the city a year or two ago?"

"I do not have syphilis," said Joey despairingly. "I'm just the guy they photographed for the ad."

Joanna laughed merrily. "I know that … but I bet it cramped your style for a while."

Joey sighed in agreement.

"But not for long," said Chandler rather acidly. "I guess all the girls must have realised eventually, you can't catch syphilis through a condom."

"You get a lot of girls, do you, Joey?" Joanna asked in a rather flirty manner.

Joey smiled in a self-satisfied way. "I do all right."

"Would that cover Rachel, maybe?" asked Joanna in an apparently casual way.

"Hell no!" said Joey, shocked at the suggestion. "She's my friend. Besides – " Involuntarily he glanced at Chandler, who stared back at him impassively. "She … she wasn't happy, Chandler," he blurted out.

Chandler nodded, his expression suggesting satisfaction rather than anything approaching remorse.

"Can I talk to you for a moment? I mean, like in private?" said Joey rather desperately.

Joanna did not look best pleased, but she got to her feet. "I guess I should be heading for work anyway," she said. She blew a kiss to Chandler. "Call me." Gathering up her coat and purse, she left in an unhurried manner.

"Look, Chandler," said Joey when she was gone, "Rachel was really upset when she heard you had Joanna over here, and not because she was afraid for her job like before. She was sad. I even asked her what was between you and her, and she said, 'Nothing, now', like she wanted there to be."

Chandler looked obstinate, and did not say anything.

"You really want Joanna more than Rachel? You're nuts, man. Who wants to be bossed around in bed? And Joanna's older than you," said Joey, grasping for any arguments he could think of to get Chandler seeing sense.

"You've been known to go with older women," said Chandler a bit defensively. "Well, I gotta get to work." He went off towards the bathroom, leaving Joey shaking his head in perplexity. He could not understand anyone preferring Joanna to Rachel. Rachel was hot, and though Joanna was attractive, "hot" was not a description that sprang to mind when you saw her, even wrapped in a towel.

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"I mean, if it was Janice, I could understand," Rachel said once more. "They have this long history, and anyway, if you ignore her voice and her laugh and stuff like that, she's really quite attractive. And she's our age, which Joanna definitely is not."

Bonnie nodded sympathetically. They were sitting in Central Perk, where she had arrived to meet Ross for lunch, to find Rachel sitting, gazing into space with a brooding look. Asking if anything was wrong had prompted a great outpouring of a whole complex situation with Chandler, Monica, Rachel's boss Joanna, and not just one but two ex-boyfriends of Monica's. Bonnie thought she had got it all straight, but now here was a Janice being thrown into the mix.

"So," she ventured, "Chandler has a history of going back to this Janice?"

"Uh-huh," said Rachel. "But the last time the break-up was really bad, because he was truly in love with her, but Joey saw her kissing her husband, and he found out she still had feelings for him. They decided that she should go back to her husband for the sake of their daughter, though at the end there Chandler didn't want her to. He took a long time to get over it."

Bonnie thought her brain was trying to expand beyond the confines of her skull as she tried to assimilate all this information. "Jeez, Ross never told me any of this," she commented.

Rachel grinned a little. "Ross was never personally affected by any of it, except that he didn't care for Janice, but then, neither did the rest of us, except maybe Phoebe. So he wouldn't tell you about it. But I remember you said, you heard all about Carol, and me, and the great big dumb stupid break, and all of that." She sounded bitter.

Bonnie looked a little worried. "Rachel, you are over him, aren't you? I mean, I don't like to think that my being with Ross is still hurting you."

Rachel smiled at her. "That's nice of you. Yeah, I truly think I am over him. But I still get mad when I think how unreasonable he was, and as you can see I'm feeling a bit low anyway, with this Chandler thing."

Bonnie's expression returned to sympathy. "Yeah, men can be a pain in the ass, all right. That's why I switch over to women sometimes, just to give myself a rest from all the hassle." She cocked an eye at Rachel. "You ever think of doing that?"

Rachel choked on her coffee. "Bonnie!" she spluttered. "Really!" She set the cup down and pulled a handful of tissues from her purse to wipe the coffee off her skirt.

"Well, look," said Bonnie, quite seriously, "you know Carol and Susan, right? You know they're not like satanists or anything, nor do they go around in overalls and boots. They're just ordinary folks. Many lesbians are attractive, like them, and quite capable of appreciating a hot girl like you without wanting to play butch-femme games and all that. Don't tell me you've never thought about it, or even kissed another girl."

"Well, I have done that," said Rachel, looking a little flushed. "My best friend Mindy, at camp when we were teenagers, she taught me to kiss, and then my sorority friend Melissa, we got drunk and made out a bit once. But honestly, Bonnie, I don't think I could take it seriously."

"You wouldn't have to," said Bonnie earnestly. "Just treat it as fun, of a kind you can have without worrying about the consequences, the way you're liable to do with a man. It can be great fun, with a woman. You've heard what they say, that women know what pleases other women best? Well, it's true." She moved a little closer to Rachel on the couch, put a hand along its back, close to Rachel's head, and looked into her eyes.

Oh my God, she's coming on to me, Rachel thought. What is it about me? First Phoebe, then Bonnie. She realised that, though they had all known from the start that Bonnie swung both ways, this side of her had rather got ignored, despite her stories, because she had seemed so aggressively heterosexual with Ross.

Keep calm, she admonished herself. You're an adult, you can handle this. No need to alienate her, when she's friendly. "Um, I think the trouble with doing things just for fun," she said aloud, affecting a calmness she did not really feel, "is that, well …" She hesitated, and found her theme. "Yeah, what I think is, that's never all that's going on. What one person thinks is just fun, another may take seriously. Look at a lot of Joey's girls. And when we came in here, a little bit drunk, and just for fun kissed Gunther and Joey and Chandler, that hurt Gunther, though I never meant to."

Bonnie was leaning back again, with a slightly wry smile. She nodded. "A fair point. Okay, but … would you at least bear what I said in mind?"

Rachel wondered how Bonnie could possibly square coming on to her with her relationship with Ross. Was she getting bored with Ross? Monica had refused to believe that the relationship would last, but had that been just out of loyalty to her? She decided to make her position even clearer.

"Yeah, but Bonnie, bear what I said in mind too," she replied in a low voice. "And maybe you should talk about this with Pheebs. And also, if you're getting tired of Ross, please try to let him down lightly. I meant what I said. I do feel I'm over him, like I wasn't before, and so I'm not gonna be there in the wings, waiting to take him back, if you drop him."

Bonnie's look was now serious, but whatever she might have been about to say was lost when Monica came in, seeming extremely pleased, and greeted them effusively.

"I love my life!" she crowed. "That restaurant is just perfect, and the people there now are good – I think I'll get along with them. And it's all agreed, I've signed a contract, and I start tomorrow!"

She seemed so excited that Rachel found it impossible not to get up and hug her. "I'm so pleased for you, honey," she said. "This is what you've wanted for so long."

Bonnie got up and hugged Monica too, a little too affectionately, or so it seemed to Rachel, but Monica did not appear to notice anything unusual.

"So, how did you get on with Pete?" Rachel asked as they sat down again together.

Monica pulled a slight face. "Well, it's clear he wants to start again," she said, "but he's being a gentleman about it. He never even hinted that I should start dating him again out of gratitude – just looked at me with big puppy dog eyes." She sighed. "I really don't know how I feel. Damn Richard, for showing up and getting me all … excited." She sighed again. "I'd like to feel for Pete what I felt for Richard, but … it's just not there."

"It wasn't there the first time either, for quite a while," said Rachel. "What you ought to do is keep going out with Pete. I mean, Richard hasn't called, has he?"

"I don't expect him to do it the very next day," said Monica, looking rather obstinate. "No, I'm gonna give him a little time."

She walked to the counter to get a coffee, and as she did so Ross finally came in. He beamed when he saw Bonnie and Rachel together. "It's so great that you guys can be friendly," he said.

Bonnie smiled at him. "I think it's great too. Maybe I should meet Carol some time; you seem to have good taste in women."

Ross looked a bit taken aback. "Um, I'm not sure that would be a good idea," he said. "For one thing, Susan might … take your interest the wrong way."

"Might she?" said Bonnie easily. "Well, okay, what about Julie? Everything I've heard about her suggests she was very nice."

"Oh, she was," said Monica, sitting down beside them. "But why are we talking about the women in Ross's past?"

"Well, it's interesting, you know," said Bonnie. "When you're like me, you kind of get to speculating about the other women that a guy you like has been out with."

Ross was now definitely looking alarmed, but he bit back whatever comment he had been about to make, and clearly had thought of a joke instead, for he began to grin.

"Maybe you should drop in at the copy shop and check out Chloe," he said jocularly.

Rachel could scarcely believe her ears. He thought that was funny? She looked down at the table, flushing with mortification.

Bonnie looked at her, and suddenly her face set. "Oh yeah, the great on-a-break one-night stand," she said in a hard voice. "If I were you, Ross, I wouldn't bring that up. You didn't come out of it looking any too good." She leaned across and patted Rachel on the knee lightly. "I truly sympathise, Rachel."

"Thanks, Bonnie," Rachel said huskily, trying to blink back tears as the pain suddenly came alive in her again.

Ross was gaping, temporarily incapable of speech, presumably because his constant cry, "We were on a break!" had been pre-empted by Bonnie. "You're … you're taking her side?" he finally said in an amazed voice.

Bonnie looked him directly in the eye. "Yeah, Ross. I know, if it hadn't happened you and I wouldn't be together, but … like I said, it would be wise to lay off that topic" she said quietly. "Please give up trying to make everyone else see it your way and let it go. The sooner you do that, the sooner we can all forget about it."

Ross was glowering and making mouth movements like a landed fish as he kept starting to say something and then biting it back. Finally he stood up. "I, I don't think I … want to be here just now," he said in a choked voice. "I'll call you." He marched out, looking deeply offended.

Bonnie looked apologetically at Rachel. "I didn't mean for that to happen," she said. "But he started it, didn't he?"

Monica moved next to Rachel and put an arm round her. "He certainly did. Are you okay, Rach?"

Rachel drew a breath and nodded, though she couldn't smile. "I guess so. But, Bonnie, you may have blown the whole relationship right there."

"Maybe," said Bonnie. "But I'm certainly not apologising to him. Maybe I asked for it, but it was a cheap shot, and he should have known it would hurt you." She looked at them seriously. " I guess you two have had to face the problem now and then, how much will you put up with in a man, if in some ways he's really great, but in others he makes you want to slap him a good one right across the chops? Well, I can tell you, that made me think, maybe it's time to switch sides again." She grinned at their startled and slightly apprehensive expressions. "But don't worry, I won't try any more moves on either of you. I've got the message. Only," she suddenly looked slightly apprehensive herself, "if Ross does decide to break up with me, would you mind if I went on dropping by now and then? Because I like hanging out with you guys, and this is a cool place to do it. I get to see more of Phoebe too."

"Sure, Bonnie," said Rachel. "I wouldn't have any objection. But you're liable to get the big freeze from Ross."

"That's his problem," said Bonnie, getting to her feet. "See you." She smiled, wiggled her fingers at them and walked out.

Monica and Rachel waved back, then looked at each other, said simultaneously, "She came on to you too?" and laughed for a moment at the sheer ludicrousness of it.

"She's an original," said Monica.

"Yeah," said Rachel.

Monica looked at her. "Do you think we should tell Ross?"

"Something's telling me we should," said Rachel slowly, "but now I think, what's the point, if they're breaking up anyway? It'll only make him feel worse." She was silent for a moment, then burst out, "You know, it would serve Ross right if she did keep coming around after they had broken up. That was so insensitive of him, to bring up Chloe." All at once, she sounded near tears.

Monica sighed, and put an arm round her. It seemed that, whatever she might say, Rachel was not fully over the pain of nearly getting back together with Ross and then having the possibility snatched away, and this had led her to mentally retract her forgiveness for the Chloe incident. She tried to put Ross's behaviour in perspective.

"Sometimes he just … does these things," she said musingly. "He always has. Mom never called him on it when he was a kid, and I guess when Chandler was his room mate he didn't point them out strongly enough either. Now that I think about it, when he was with Carol he didn't use to put his foot in his mouth like that." She shook her head. "Breaking up with her really brought his bad habits back to the surface, I think."

Rachel nodded, but she wasn't thinking about Ross any more. She was thinking about Chandler.

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Endnote: And if anyone thinks, "No, Ross would never behave like that," check out the end of 5,15, and his performance when visiting Carol on her and Susan's anniversary night in 3,18. Sometimes his insensitivity makes me despair.