Sarah has recently — and I am quoting her — taken charge.
This is what she tells me at brunch on Saturday. We are at the place we go to when one of us is having something. Having something is a category of meeting that has been growing in usage, lately, in the way catching up used to. Today Sarah is having something. I am, drily, here for it.
The eggs Benedict are the eggs Benedict. The waiter has been told it is Sarah's birthday, which it is not. Sarah has decided that the year she is having merits the prosecco that comes with the birthday brunch upgrade, regardless of the calendar. I find this admirable in a way I will not put into words, because Sarah will take any small admiration as encouragement, and Sarah is not, at this point, in need of encouragement.
She has, she tells me, done a number of things.
She has changed her GP. She has changed her gym. She has changed, briefly and at significant emotional cost, her hairdresser. She has gone to a doctor in a specific clinic in a specific postcode and emerged with a specific prescription which she names twice in twelve minutes, both times in a tone I associate with women describing handbags. I nod. I do not say I have looked at the same clinic's website. I do not say I have looked at it three times, on a Tuesday, late.
"You should," Sarah says, of approximately everything.
"Mm," I say, of approximately everything.
I should explain that Sarah is one of two friends I have who have, in the last eighteen months, started speaking publicly about themselves as projects. The other, Claire, is in a podcast era. Sarah is in a clinic era. I am in what I am increasingly inclined to think of as a noticing era, which has not yet generated a podcast, and is unlikely to. The noticing era is private. This is one of the things I notice.
The eggs Benedict are excellent. Sarah has ordered for both of us, on the grounds that I am, she says, not currently making strong food decisions. I find this offensive but also, on reflection, accurate. I had pasta at quarter past four yesterday afternoon. There were reasons. None of them survive scrutiny.
We split the bill. We always split the bill. Sarah pays for the prosecco, on the grounds that the prosecco was hers, which is true.
I walk to the tube. I do not think about the clinic. I think, vaguely, about the prosecco. I think, more specifically, about the small parcel that arrived at my flat on Wednesday in plain packaging from a UK brand whose name I cannot, at this exact moment, remember. The parcel is on the bedside table. It joins, in approximately chronological order: an unopened bottle of magnesium, a pillow-spray that I have already, on balance, decided I dislike, and one small object I have not yet decided how to feel about.
Sarah does not know about the small object. The small object is not part of taking charge. The small object is part of the noticing era, and the noticing era moves more quietly than Sarah's. There may, in time, be a podcast. There will not, in time, be a podcast.
I have sixty days, in writing, to decide what I think.
I do not anticipate needing them all.
— Charlie