Scene Two: Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

No shower had ever been sweeter, Chandler decided, getting rid of the last vestiges of foreign country, sweat, plane, more sweat and the sticky soda residue that had been sprayed over him by the man sitting next to him on the flight back.

Clean clothes, his own things. He reflected that there was a chance - a good one - that his spirit of adventure had been surgically removed at birth, but he could live with that. He padded across the apartment, relishing its size, its space, its view across the Village.

That done, he went in search of company.

'Hey.'

Rachel looked up from the sofa. 'Hey.'

He closed the door, took a step into the apartment and found what he could only call a hole where the floor used to be. 'Love what you've done with the place - what's with all the pictures?'

Rachel grimaced. 'Monica.'

'Ah.'

'That's easy for you to say! Look; look!' She stormed across, snatched two of the pictures off the walls. 'I have to live with these holes! I have to live with these walls! I have to live in this apartment! I mean-' she waved her hands, Monica's colourful pictures flapping '-how do you even make all these holes in a wall?'

Chandler shrugged. 'Well, they were mainly Spackle anyhow.'

Rachel blinked. 'What? Why?'

He shrugged again. 'Hammer Darts.'

She blew out a breath, rolling her eyes, let the pieces of paper slide gently to the ground.

'Where is everyone, anyway?'

'Joey not home, huh?'

'Unless he's turned invisible, I'll go with no. If his audition went well he'll be celebrating by having sex; and if it went badly he'll be getting over it by, y'know-'

'Having sex?'

'Yup. It's kind of his answer to everything.' He paused. 'So, that's the Joey non-mystery solved, what about the rest?'

'Uh, Monica's out. Phoebe... Anyone's guess.' She smiled tightly. 'Ross is, no doubt, with Miss England.'

'Ah, those damn Brits coming over here and stealing our men.' He watched her flop onto the sofa again, stare moodily at nothing. 'What about you?'

'What about me?' Sharp.

'I mean, why are you in and not ... doing whatever it is you crazy kids are doing these days?'

'I-' She rested her head against the back of the sofa. 'I don't have a date. I have no prospect of a date. God, this sucks. And it's pathetic.' She eyed him. 'What about you?'

'Uh, I just got back from fake-moving to Yemen - oddly enough that left me very little time to rustle up a date for tonight.' Joey, he thought gloomily but without rancour, would have left with a date. Joey would have left with dates for every night of the coming week and the one after that. Joey would have had left with all of those dates and had sex with the hot flight attendant before they'd even touched down. He settled on the arm of the sofa, reached across and lightly tapped her knee. 'Hey, just think: no matter what happens you can always be sure that anything you can be pathetic at, I can be pathetic-er.'

A pause; she tilted her head at him. 'I can do anything more pathetically than you.'

'No, you can't.'

'Yes, I can.'

'No, you can't.'

'Yes, I can.'

They smiled at each other.

'Okay, that's it.' Rachel stood up, clapped her hands together. 'I hearby call an end to the Pathetic Losers Association - we're going out.'

He put his eyebrows up. 'We're going out? Together?'

'Well, that would make the "we" part a lot easier. Come on, Bing.' She grabbed hold of him, grabbed her purse, started for the door.

'Uh, Rach-'

'No, no, we are going out and we are going to have fun.'

'Uh, yeah, that's great, but-'

'No! No "but", no.'

At the head of the stairs; he grabbed hold of the balustrade, finally halting her relentless motion. 'Okay, we can go out but first, I need my wallet; and second ... no offence, but your hair is... Well, Pippi Longstocking comes to mind.'

Rachel's hand flew to her hair; her eyes, rounded with horror, turned on him. 'Oh my God!' She ran back to the apartment, let herself in and slammed the door. Chandler waited, counting back from five, got to two and-

'Give me twenty minutes to get ready, then we're going out.'

The door slammed shut again. Chandler smiled to himself.

ooOoo

'Okay, one more.'

'I don't know-'

'Hey, this was your idea!'

'Oh... All right.'

Salt, tequila, lemon.

Rachel's eyes watered and she coughed, placing the shot-glass back on the counter. 'Okay-' She shuddered again involuntarily, certain that she would never get rid of the taste. 'Okay, here's what I just don't get. The last time you and Janice were together you were so crazy about her.'

Chandler nodded. 'I know.'

'I mean, you would have done anything, anything, to be with her. And you were so bummed when she left...' She hit him on the shoulder, frowning. 'What happened to that?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know. I remember how it felt, and it's kinda like it happened to someone else. I loved her so much... And-and I was actually thinking about marrying her, about building a life with her; but when I saw her again, it was like none of that had ever happened.'

Rachel propped her cheek up on her hand, leaning against it heavily. 'How do you do that?'

'What?'

'Stop loving someone?'

'I-' He sighed, looked at her sadly. 'I don't know, Rach. I don't even know how you start, so stopping? I guess it either happens or it doesn't - same way you can't make someone love you if they don't, or you can't make yourself love them back.'

'It would be so great if you could.'

'It would.' He examined his empty shot-glass. 'My life would look ... probably more like Joey's, really.'

'Oh...' Rachel straightened up. 'You don't to be like Joey! Don't get me wrong, he's a sweet guy, he's really sweet, but all that - just one girl after another?'

'Oh yeah, you're right, all that meaningless sex with beautiful women is really destroying his soul.'

'But it is! It will!' Rachel grabbed his shirt-front, pulled him closer, gazing at him urgently. Music from the sound-system pulsated, deafening, rattling the glasses behind the bar; it vibrated through her. She raised her voice, speaking close to his ear. 'You're the one- You're the guy who was looking for a real relationship, y'know, something deep and-and wonderful, and- And you know that sex with someone you love, someone you really, really love and care about is so much better than ... hundreds ... of-of...uh...of...'

'One night stands?'

'Yes! Yes, so much better than that. You know that. 'Cos you could have any girl in this bar, Chandler Bing, but you don't because you are a decent guy and you care about the girls you're with. Do you know how rare that is?'

He peered at her, those eyes that were strikingly, vividly blue. Deeply blue. Has his eyes, she wondered, always been that particular shade? And if they had been, what was the particular reason she had had for never noticing before?

Chandler placed his hand over hers, gently relieving it of his shirt. 'You're really sweet.' His fingers were still curled around hers.

She grinned at him idiotically. 'You know what we need?'

'More tequila?'

'Way more tequila!'

ooOoo

Playing pool, Chandler thought, was an awful lot easier when the balls kept still. He closed one eye, narrowing the other, staring hard down the length of the cue. It didn't really help with the motion, but at least now there was just the one ball instead of two. He steadied himself, made the shot.

'And that's how it's done!' Somehow, more by luck than skill, the ball had ended up almost exactly where he had wanted it.

'Okay. Okay.' Rachel nodded, leaning heavily against her cue. 'Okay. I can do that.' She bent over the table, brow furrowing, balancing the cue awkwardly.

'Here...' He leant across, repositioning her fingers; they were pliant, obedient in his. 'And you just need to be closer, uh...' He took hold of her hips, pushing her towards the table; she sighed slightly, pushing her hips lightly back into him. He caught his breath and took hold of the cue, his hand just above hers. Her hair tickled his face, the warmth of her skin rising from the curve of her neck.

The balls skittered across the table, knocking into each other. Rachel turned her face to his, one corner of her mouth turning up. 'And that's how it's done.' Voice smoky, like her eyes, and both laden with mischief.

Chandler released her, straightened up, looked down at her. She smiled back, squeezed between him and the table, her body pressing hard against his for a moment. Back at her end of the table she was smiling again; they watched each other for a while, then her head tilted.

'Are we playing or not?'

'Oh yeah,' he said, 'we're playing.'