Meanwhile, Andrew continued without pausing for breath. ‘So, when I said it could go as a follow-up, I meant for you to write it. I was looking at you, speaking to you.’
‘I’m not contesting what you said, what you might’ve meant or not meant.’ And I was looking at you, too.
‘I was addressing you,’ he said in classic Andrew Brown style.
‘So? I have no idea what’s going on in that head of yours,’ I said, spreading out my hands for effect.
‘You knew what I meant.’
‘Are you accusing me of shirking work?’ My voice was dripping sugar.
‘This is such bullshit,’ Andrew growled. ‘I can’t understand why you couldn’t have told me earlier that you aren’t writing the piece. That you can’t write the piece.’
Can’t or won’t? I cocked an eyebrow, letting the unasked question stoke his depleting reserves.
‘As far as I know…’
‘What you know is not important; it’s what you had to do.’
I smiled, not for effect.
If there was an emoji for interrupting, it should look like Andrew Brown. I’m raising a public interest petition.
‘The only reason I’m not writing the follow-up or whatever it is that you want to call this piece is because I wasn’t asked to write it.’
‘I asked you to write it, ba… Myraah.’ His hand was on his chest, and his eyes were burning bright.
‘Nobody asked me to write it, Brown. You only said it should be written.’
‘If you had a question, you should’ve asked me.’
We were friends, we always were. Even when the two of you were dating.
Andrew closed in on my space and rested his hands on my desk. ‘This is the problem with you,’ he said. ‘Your communication skills are zero.’
I looked up from my computer screen and let the laugh out of me. It started as a bark and finished on a hysterical note.
‘Touché!’ I exclaimed. ‘Only that it’s what I do for a living.’
‘I mean it, you can’t answer a telephone call or get back to a text. You don’t want to tell people where they stand in your life. You don’t want to communicate.’
‘Excuse me!’
‘Why can’t you just pick up the phone and call? Or message? Why can’t you ask a question, clear your doubts? If there was any confusion, and you thought…’
I was wearing my bored expression now. I had worn it well, I could tell by the look in his eyes. Andrew Brown doesn’t do shows, but he was so lost and splashing about that it was ridiculously funny. A grown man in polka dots. ‘I didn’t think I had to do the piece. In my mind, there was no doubt at all.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How can you do this all the time?’
This wasn’t about Venkamma Achar. May her soul rest in peace.
A man caught in dense weeds. A part of me felt for him. But the other me was angry. Livid at the lies and hidden truths. Livid that he had the audacity to demand explanations when he never gave one.
‘Next time,’ he said, ‘don’t assume or think… Don’t give me the “I thought this” or “I thought that” excuse.’
‘I didn’t think,’ I said. ‘That’s you, Andrew Brown. Entirely you.’
‘I’m not the one who hasn’t written the story I was assigned because “I thought”.’
