Chapter 86: Chandler
Andrew made dinner for two.
Joey had stayed after the VHS tape situation, partly because he'd been in the building anyway and partly because Joey's relationship with meals was such that the possibility of one in proximity made departure feel irrational. Andrew had made enough for four people — experience had taught him that cooking for Joey required a recalibration of all standard quantities — and they'd eaten at the kitchen table while Baywatch played on mute in the living room, which was Joey's preferred configuration.
Forty minutes of cooking, twenty minutes of eating. The math of a Joey dinner.
"There's dessert in the fridge," Andrew said, standing up to clear plates.
Joey was already reaching for his jacket pocket — the small scarf he produced whenever food was being discussed, an early development in their friendship that Andrew had stopped questioning.
"Tomorrow," Andrew said. "I'll bring it to Monica's."
Joey considered this with the philosophical resignation of someone accepting a deferral they didn't love. He lay back on the couch with the specific horizontal satisfaction of a man who had eaten precisely as much as he wanted and had no regrets about any of it.
Andrew washed the dishes.
The doorbell rang at eight-thirty.
Andrew opened it to find Chandler in the hallway with a small overnight bag and the expression of a man who had made a decision and was hoping it wouldn't require much explanation.
"Hey," Chandler said. "Any chance I could stay here tonight?"
Andrew stepped back from the door. "Come in."
Chandler came in, saw Joey on the couch, and stopped.
"Joey. Why are you—" He looked at Joey's expression of post-dinner contentment. "Actually, never mind. I can tell from context."
"I have an audition tomorrow," Joey said, by way of explanation. "Early. So I'm going home soon to run lines." He paused. "Andrew made pot roast."
"Of course he did." Chandler set his bag down and sat in the armchair.
Andrew brought him a plate from the portion he'd kept back — habit, at this point, to keep something in reserve — and Chandnet ate with the focused appreciation of someone who had walked in hungry and was grateful not to have to negotiate for food.
Joey levered himself upright at nine, remembered his audition, and left with the unhurried dignity of a man whose relationship with urgency was philosophical rather than practical.
"When you get home," Chandler called after him, "if Janice asks, I'm on a work trip. Back tomorrow."
"Sure," Joey said, and was gone.
Andrew sat down across from Chandler.
"How long has this been going on?" he said.
Chandler set down his fork. "Three weeks."
"Three weeks of business trips."
"Two business trips and one overnight at the office and one staying at my cousin's." Chandler said it with the specific tone of someone reciting a list they're not proud of. "I'm not proud of the cousin one. I don't have a cousin in New York."
Andrew looked at him.
"I know," Chandler said, before Andrew could say it. "I know."
The thing about Chandler and Janice was complicated in a way that Andrew understood from the outside better than Chandler understood it from the inside. Janice was, genuinely, a good person — warm, interested in everyone, loyal in a way that ran deep. She was also, genuinely, a lot — the laugh, the volume, the specific frequency of her presence that required a kind of sustained openness that Chandler struggled to maintain.
But that wasn't the real issue, and Andrew suspected Chandler knew it.
"Is it the laugh?" Andrew said.
"The laugh is — it's an adjustment," Chandler said carefully. "You get used to it. Mostly." He turned his fork over. "It's not the laugh."
"What is it?"
Chandler was quiet for a moment. This was the part where he would normally produce a joke — the deflection arriving on schedule, wrapping the real thing in something more manageable. Andrew waited to see which version he'd get.
"She wants more than I know how to give," Chandler said. No joke. "She wants the whole thing — the relationship, the future, the — she talks about it like it's already decided. And I care about her. I genuinely do. But when she talks like that I just—" He stopped. "I start looking for the exit."
"That's not about Janice," Andrew said.
"I know it's not about Janice." Chandler picked his fork back up, then put it down again. "I know it's about whatever's wrong with me that makes the exit look better than the thing I actually want."
Andrew looked at him steadily. "You're not broken, Chandler. You're scared. Those are different things."
"They feel the same from the inside."
"I know. But one of them can be worked on."
Chandler sat with that for a moment.
"Ross thinks I should talk to someone," he said. "A professional someone."
"Ross is right," Andrew said.
"Ross is almost never right about personal things."
"He's right about this one."
Chandler looked at the ceiling with the expression of someone who had hoped for a different answer and wasn't entirely surprised by the one he'd gotten.
"She called me three times today," he said. "I let it go to voicemail. All three."
"Call her back tomorrow," Andrew said.
"And say what?"
"That you needed some space to think and you're sorry you went quiet." Andrew picked up his own coffee. "You don't have to have the whole conversation tomorrow. You just have to stop disappearing."
Chandler was quiet for a long moment.
"The Monica thing," he said, very carefully, not looking at Andrew. "If that were — if things had gone differently there—"
"They didn't," Andrew said. Simply, without elaboration. "Janice is who's here. That's the actual situation."
Chandler nodded slowly. Absorbing this with the honesty of someone who needed to hear it said plainly.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay," Andrew said.
They sat in the comfortable quiet of two people who had said the important things and didn't need to repeat them. The apartment was warm. Outside, New York moved through its evening.
"The pot roast is really good," Chandler said eventually.
"I know," Andrew said.
"Like, genuinely excellent. I want to talk about it."
"Go ahead."
"The way the vegetables—" Chandler gestured vaguely. "There's something happening there. Is that rosemary?"
"Rosemary and thyme," Andrew said. "Fresh, not dried. And I sear the meat before it goes in the oven — you have to develop the crust first or the whole thing is just gray and sad."
Chandler nodded with the focused engagement of someone who had found a topic that required nothing complicated from him. "Can you teach me to make it?"
"Yes," Andrew said. "Not tonight, but yes."
"Deal." Chandler settled back in the armchair with the specific relief of a man who had come to someone else's apartment carrying a difficult thing and had put it down and been fed.
He was asleep in the chair by ten.
Andrew put a blanket over him, turned off the lamp, and went to bed.
[Observation (Proficient): 76/100]
The panel moved in the dark, and Andrew filed it without fully knowing what he'd observed — something about the difference between what people ran from and what they actually wanted, and how sometimes those were closer together than they looked.
Thursday was Red Hook.
He went to sleep.
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