I Was Already Going Somewhere Else

I asked a friend if he wanted to come somewhere with me one evening. He said he was going home, so I made other plans and thought nothing more about it. Later I learned that he had called a woman I liked, someone he knew I liked, and arranged to see her.

Apparently she had suggested that I come too.

He told her I was already going somewhere else.

The sentence was technically true. That was what made it effective. He had not invented a destination for me or told a dramatic lie. He had simply helped events continue without me.

I learned about this later, when she asked why I never spent time with them. Suddenly several small things that had seemed unimportant began to fit together. There is an unpleasant kind of intelligence that arrives only after the event, when the past becomes clear at exactly the moment it becomes impossible to change.

What bothered me most was not that two friends could like the same person. Nobody owns another person, and attraction is not something friends can assign between themselves. The problem was that one of us knew there was a competition while the other still believed there was only friendship.

I would probably not have enjoyed hearing, “I like her too.” But I would have understood the situation. Honesty would not have removed the discomfort; it would only have prevented the extra feeling of discovering that someone had been moving pieces while I did not know a game had started.

At the time I was angry enough to make jokes about betrayal and declare that only cigarettes and drinks were reliable friends. That was the language of the moment. Years later, the event looks smaller, but the sentence still interests me.

I was already going somewhere else.

True enough to be defended.

Useful enough to remove me from the room.