Chapter 25: The One Where the Christmas Lights Are Still Up
The thing about March in New York was that it arrived with the specific energy of a month that had been promised and was now being held accountable. The snow was gone. The trees were doing preliminary work. The city had the slightly surprised quality of a place that had gotten through something and wasn't entirely sure what came next.
Monica's apartment had Christmas lights still up on the small balcony outside the kitchen window, which was not a statement about anything — they'd just been there since December and taking them down had never quite made the list. In the particular gray-then-gold light of early March, they looked less like forgotten decoration and more like something that had decided to stay.
Monica stood at her kitchen counter at eight in the morning with her knives laid out in the order she always laid them out, a pile of vegetables that had not yet become anything, and the expression of a woman who had been cooking professionally for long enough that she could produce excellent food automatically while her brain was somewhere else entirely.
Her brain was on the job listings.
She'd printed three of them the previous afternoon and had been rotating through them with the focused attention she usually reserved for complicated sauces — reading them, putting them down, picking them up again.
The bread-talking restaurant was off the table. The other two were possible. One was a sous chef position at a place in the West Village that had a Michelin recommendation and a head chef known for being difficult in the specific way that meant either brilliant or catastrophic depending on the week. The other was a line position at a midtown hotel that paid well and required nothing of her that she didn't already have in her sleep.
The hotel was the safer choice. That was the problem with it.
She was still thinking about this when the phone rang.
Ethan picked up on the second ring.
The voice on the other end was from 20th Century Fox — not the assistant he'd been dealing with, but the development executive directly, which meant something had moved. The script had cleared the internal review. They were moving into pre-production conversations. They wanted to talk casting.
He sat down at his desk while the executive talked, not because he needed to but because the news had a weight to it that made standing feel like the wrong choice.
When he hung up, he sat there for a moment with the phone still in his hand.
Pre-production. That was a different word than development. Development was where ideas went to be considered. Pre-production was where they went to become real.
He thought about Joey.
Joey was on the couch when Ethan came through the door, in the specific configuration of a man who had been there for a while and had made peace with it — half a sandwich on the coffee table, the television on something he wasn't watching, the particular comfortable inertia of a Sunday morning that had extended into afternoon without anyone intervening.
Chandler was in the armchair, reading something, which was the version of Chandler that existed when Joey wasn't actively requiring anything of him.
"Fox called," Ethan said, closing the door.
Chandler looked up. Joey sat up slightly.
"The Predestination project," Ethan said. "They're moving into pre-production. They want to talk casting."
A beat.
"Casting," Chandler said.
"Casting," Ethan confirmed. He looked at Joey. "I told them I had someone they should meet."
Joey's expression went through several distinct phases in about two seconds — recognition, disbelief, and then the specific Joey delight that was slightly larger than the room it was in. He stood up from the couch with the energy of a man who had been given information that required standing.
"Me," he said.
"You," Ethan said.
"Fox Film," Joey said. "A real movie."
"A real movie," Ethan said. "The role isn't set — they'll want to talk about fit. But I told them you were worth the conversation, and they said bring him in."
Joey pointed at him with the contained reverence of someone who had been waiting for this particular sentence for a long time. "I'm going to be in a movie," he said.
"You might be in a movie," Ethan said. "First there's the meeting."
"I'm going to be in a movie," Joey said, to Chandler.
"I heard," Chandler said.
"Fox," Joey said, to the room generally.
"We all heard," Chandler said.
"Chandler," Joey said, turning to him with the expansive generosity of a man who had just received excellent news and wanted to distribute some of it. "Dinner. Tonight. My treat. You come too." He looked at Ethan. "All three of us. The good place."
"Which good place?" Ethan said.
"The one Monica says is too expensive for a Tuesday," Joey said.
"It's not Tuesday," Chandler said.
"Then it's definitely fine," Joey said, already moving to find his jacket.
Chandler looked at Ethan. "You know I'm just here as witness to this moment," he said.
"That's a legitimate role," Ethan said.
"I want it noted," Chandler said, "that when Joey is accepting his award, I expect to be mentioned. Not first. But mentioned."
"Noted," Ethan said.
The restaurant on 56th had the quality of a place that had made a decision about itself sometime in the 1970s and had not revisited it — dark wood, good lighting, the kind of menu that was three pages and meant every word of it. It was, in fact, the good place.
They'd been there about forty minutes, past the ordering stage and into the comfortable middle of a meal that was going well, when Joey looked up from his food and went slightly still.
"Ethan," he said.
"Yeah," Ethan said.
"At the table by the window," Joey said. "The waitress."
Ethan looked. The waitress at the window table was moving through an order with the focused efficiency of someone who knew the menu and had no patience for people who didn't. She had Phoebe's face and Phoebe's general coloring and an expression that was nothing like Phoebe's at all — cooler, more contained, the expression of someone who had developed a professional distance from the room she was in.
"That's not Phoebe," Ethan said.
"That's definitely not Phoebe," Chandler said, who had also looked.
"She looks exactly like Phoebe," Joey said.
"She does," Ethan agreed. "She's not."
The waitress, as if she'd registered the attention — which she had, because waitresses always registered the table that was looking at them — glanced over. She had the expression of someone who had been glanced at this way before and knew exactly what it meant.
She came over.
"You guys know Phoebe," she said. It wasn't a question.
"She's our friend," Ethan said. "I'm sorry for staring — it's just—"
"I know," she said. "I get it. I'm Ursula."
"Ursula," Ethan said.
"Her twin," Ursula confirmed, with the specific economy of someone who had been delivering this information their whole life and had reduced it to its minimum viable form. She looked at the table. "You need anything else?"
"We're good," Ethan said. "Thank you, Ursula."
She went back to her section.
Joey watched her go with the expression of a man processing something.
"Phoebe has a twin," he said.
"Phoebe has a twin," Ethan confirmed.
"Who waitresses," Joey said.
"Apparently," Ethan said.
"And Phoebe's never mentioned her," Chandler said.
"No," Ethan said.
The table sat with this for a moment. There was clearly a whole story there — the particular kind of story that didn't get told at a dinner table but existed regardless.
"Should we tell her we saw her?" Joey said.
"That's Phoebe's call," Ethan said. "We saw someone who looks like her. Whether she wants to talk about it is up to her."
Chandler looked at him. "You're not even a little curious?"
"I'm very curious," Ethan said. "That's why I'm waiting for Phoebe to decide to tell us."
Joey nodded slowly, absorbing this. Then he looked at his food, then at the window table where Ursula was taking an order. Something was working in his expression that he wasn't saying.
"Joey," Chandler said.
"I'm not doing anything," Joey said.
"You have a face," Chandler said.
"I always have a face," Joey said. "It came with everything else."
"A specific face," Chandler said.
"She's nice-looking," Joey said. "That's allowed."
"She has Phoebe's face," Chandler said.
"She has her own face," Joey said. "That she shares with Phoebe. Which is a biological thing, not a—" He stopped. "I'm just noting she's nice-looking. I'm not doing anything about it."
"Good," Ethan said.
"Yet," Joey said.
"Joey," both of them said.
"I said yet," Joey said. "As in, not now. I'm aware of the situation."
Ethan made a small mental note — this was going to be a thing — and went back to his food.
They were three blocks from home when Ross appeared on the sidewalk ahead of them, coming from the opposite direction with the specific walk of a man whose nervous system was running ahead of his body.
He saw them. His expression shifted from whatever it had been to the expression of a man who had just found the people he needed.
"Carol's at thirty-six weeks," Ross said, when he was close enough to say it without shouting.
"We know," Chandler said. "You've been updating us weekly."
"They scheduled a prenatal class," Ross said. "For Saturday. At the hospital. For parents." He paused on the last word in the way of someone for whom the word had just arrived in its full weight. "I'm going to be in a class. For parents."
"Ross," Ethan said. "You've known about this baby for seven months."
"Knowing about it and being in a class for it are different experiences," Ross said. "The class has a syllabus. I've seen the syllabus. There is a section on breathing."
"Breathing is good," Joey said.
"I know how to breathe," Ross said. "I've been doing it my entire life. I don't need a section on it."
"It's a different kind of breathing," Ethan said.
"How different can breathing be?" Ross said.
"Apparently different enough for a whole section," Chandler said.
Ross looked at Ethan with the expression of a man requesting steady ground. "Am I ready for this?"
"No," Ethan said. "Nobody's ready for it. That's not how it works. You show up and then you figure it out and then six months later you can't imagine not knowing it."
"That's not reassuring," Ross said.
"It's accurate," Ethan said. "Which is better."
Ross absorbed this. They stood on the sidewalk in the March evening, the city moving around them with the unhurried purpose of a Sunday night.
"Is Carol — is she okay about it?" Ethan said. "The class, the — all of it."
"Carol's fine," Ross said, which came out slightly complicated. "Carol and Susan are both fine. They've been to two classes already. This one they want me at for the joint session."
"So they're ahead of you," Chandler said.
"They've been ahead of me since approximately the beginning," Ross said, without particular bitterness. Just the flat accuracy of a man who had been processing this for seven months. "I'm catching up."
"You're doing fine," Ethan said.
"I know," Ross said. "I just—" He stopped. "I'm going to be somebody's father."
The sidewalk held that for a moment.
"Yeah," Ethan said. "You are."
"Carol said I'd be good," Ross said. "She said it at the Valentine's dinner."
"She meant it," Ethan said. "I watched her face when she said it."
Ross nodded, slowly, in the way of someone receiving something he needed. "Okay," he said. "Okay."
Joey patted him on the shoulder twice — the Joey version of a comprehensive emotional response. "Come get dessert," he said. "I'm still paying."
"You've been saying that for two hours," Chandler said. "At some point it becomes a structural commitment."
"I'm committed," Joey said.
"Good," Ross said. "Because I need pie."
The following afternoon had the specific quality of a Tuesday that had decided to be eventful without consulting anyone.
Ethan was at his desk when the phone rang — Monica, and from the first syllable he could tell it was the voice she used when something had happened and she needed to say it out loud to someone before she decided how to feel about it.
"Rachel fell off the balcony," Monica said.
Ethan was already standing up. "How bad?"
"Sprained ankle. She's okay. She's at St. Luke's — they're finishing the examination now. She was taking down the Christmas lights."
"The balcony lights," Ethan said.
"She stood on a chair," Monica said. "The chair had opinions about this."
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes," Ethan said.
Rachel was sitting on the examination table with the expression of a woman who had been through something undignified and was reconstructing her composure around it. Her left ankle was wrapped. The doctor had been and gone. Monica was next to her with the focused, practical concern she brought to situations that required managing.
"The chair," Ethan said, coming through the curtain.
"Don't," Rachel said.
"I wasn't going to say anything," Ethan said.
"You were going to say something about the chair," Rachel said.
"I was going to ask if you were okay," Ethan said.
Rachel looked at him. "I'm fine," she said. "It's a sprain. I have to stay off it for a few days." She looked at her wrapped ankle with the expression of someone performing a cost-benefit analysis. "Which means I can't waitress."
"Which means you rest," Monica said.
"Which means I sit in the apartment and—" Rachel stopped. She pressed her hands flat on the exam table. "I had an interview. Tomorrow. That place on Fifth Avenue — the department store, the fashion buying department. I've been sending resumes for three weeks and this was the first one that called back and now I—"
"Call them," Ethan said.
"And say what? I sprained my ankle taking down Christmas lights in March?"
"Say you had a minor injury and need to reschedule," Ethan said. "Don't explain the Christmas lights. Just reschedule."
Rachel looked at him. "What if they say no?"
"Then they say no," Ethan said. "But most reasonable employers will reschedule for a medical reason. And if they won't reschedule a first interview for a sprained ankle, you don't want to work for them."
Rachel was quiet for a moment. "I was really ready for that interview," she said. "I had the whole thing planned out. What I was going to wear, what I was going to say about my experience in—" She stopped. "My experience in fashion is that I've always cared about it and never done anything with it."
"That's a start," Ethan said. "That's more than most people walk in with."
"It's not a resume," Rachel said.
"No," Ethan said. "But it's real. And real reads in an interview when the stuff on the paper is thin." He sat down in the chair next to the exam table. "Rachel. You know this world. You know what works and what doesn't, you know what's worth the price and what isn't, you have opinions about it that are genuinely informed. The resume gets you in the door. The actual you is what gets you the job."
Monica, from the other chair: "He's right."
"You're both very encouraging," Rachel said. "It's slightly suspicious."
"We're right," Monica said. "Which is different from encouraging."
Rachel looked at her wrapped ankle again. "I'm going to call them," she said. "I'm going to call and reschedule and I'm not going to mention the chair."
"Good call," Ethan said.
"Or the Christmas lights," Rachel said.
"Definitely not the Christmas lights," Monica confirmed.
Rachel looked at both of them. "Why were they even still up?" she said. "It's March."
"That," Monica said, with the tone of someone who had been thinking about this for three months, "is an excellent question."
Two days later, Rachel was on the couch with her ankle elevated on a pillow, working through a stack of fashion industry contacts and trade publications that she'd assembled with the focused energy of someone who had decided that being off her feet for a week was not the same thing as not doing anything.
Ethan came by in the late afternoon, found her in this configuration, and dropped into the armchair across from her.
"The interview's rescheduled," she said, without looking up.
"Good," he said.
"Thursday week." She turned a page of something. "Which gives me nine days to know everything about the buying side of the fashion industry."
"You don't need to know everything," Ethan said. "You need to know enough to have real opinions about it."
"I have real opinions," Rachel said. "I just need to know if my real opinions are the right real opinions or the wrong real opinions."
"There aren't wrong opinions in fashion," Ethan said. "There are unsupported ones. Do you know why you think what you think? Can you talk about it?"
Rachel looked at him over the top of her trade publication. "I can talk about anything," she said.
"I know," he said. "That's actually your best quality for this."
She set the publication down. "You recommended me for this," she said. "The fashion direction. You said it first."
"I said what I observed," Ethan said. "You do the thing. I just named it."
Rachel looked at him for a moment with the expression she sometimes had — the one that was slightly recalibrating something. "What if I don't get it?"
"Then you've learned what the interview process is like," Ethan said. "And the next one is easier."
"What if I do get it?"
"Then your life changes," Ethan said. "In the direction you want it to change."
Rachel looked at the stack of materials on the couch beside her. "I've been a waitress for six months," she said. "And I don't hate it. That's maybe the most surprising thing. I thought I'd hate it, and it's actually — I'm fine at it. Not great. Fine." She paused. "But fine isn't what I'm going for."
"No," Ethan said. "It's not."
"Okay," she said. She picked up the trade publication again. "Then I'm going to know everything about the buying side of the fashion industry."
"Good," Ethan said.
Outside, the March afternoon was doing the thing it did when it was trying — the light coming through Monica's windows at the angle that made the apartment look like it had been arranged specifically to receive it, the Christmas lights on the balcony doing nothing in particular, just hanging there in the specific way of things that had stayed past their occasion and were still somehow fine.
In Central Perk the following morning, Joey arrived five minutes after Ethan with the expression of a man carrying something he'd been carrying since the night before and had decided he was going to say.
He sat down across from Ethan, ordered his coffee, and looked at the table for a moment.
"Ursula," he said.
Ethan waited.
"I know what you're going to say," Joey said.
"I haven't said anything," Ethan said.
"You're going to say she has Phoebe's face and it's complicated and I should think about it carefully," Joey said.
"I was going to let you talk," Ethan said.
Joey looked at his coffee. "It's not about the face," he said. "I know that sounds—"
"I believe you," Ethan said. "Tell me what it actually is."
Joey thought about it with the particular seriousness he brought to things that actually required it. "She's different," he said. "Phoebe is — Phoebe is warm. You know exactly what Phoebe is. Ursula's — I don't know what she is. She's the version of the same person where you have to figure out what's underneath."
"That's either interesting or a warning sign," Ethan said.
"I know," Joey said. "I'm aware." He picked up his coffee. "I'm not going to do anything about it. I just wanted to say it to someone before it sat in me too long."
"Okay," Ethan said.
"Okay," Joey said.
They drank their coffees. Outside, the city was doing its midmorning Tuesday thing, purposeful and unremarkable, the March light doing its best work on the street.
"The Fox meeting," Joey said. "When?"
"Friday," Ethan said. "I'll come with you. We'll go in together and I'll introduce you and then step back."
"What do I wear?" Joey said.
"Something that's you," Ethan said. "Not an audition version of you. The actual you."
"The actual me wears—"
"I know what you wear," Ethan said. "Wear that."
Joey nodded with the serious expression of a man who had just received important strategic guidance. "The actual me," he said.
"The actual you," Ethan confirmed. "That's the one they need to see."
Joey sat back, and something in his posture settled — the specific settling of a man who had decided to trust something and was following through on the decision.
"Good," he said.
"Yeah," Ethan said.
Outside, the Christmas lights on Monica's balcony caught a patch of morning sun and held it briefly before the cloud moved on, and the city went back to being March, which was, all things considered, a significant improvement on February.
[Reader Support Milestones]
500 Power Stones → +1 Chapter
10 Reviews → +1 Chapter
Enjoyed the read? Leave a review.
20+advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger