Chapter 22: The One with the Burning Valentine's
The morning after Valentine's Day had the particular quality of a morning that was technically the same as any other Thursday but felt like it was reviewing the previous evening with one eyebrow raised.
Ethan came through Monica's door at nine-fifteen to find a scene that required a moment of processing.
Janice Hosenstein was in the living room.
She was wearing a coat she hadn't taken off yet, which meant she had either just arrived or was about to leave, and she was in the middle of a sentence that Monica was receiving with the expression of someone who had been receiving sentences for a while and was being very gracious about it.
Chandler was standing near the kitchen counter with the specific posture of a man who has accepted his circumstances and is waiting for them to conclude.
"Ethan!" Janice said, turning with the complete and unmanaged delight she brought to all recognitions. "Oh my GOD, look at you. Happy day-after-Valentine's Day!"
"Hi, Janice," Ethan said. "Happy day-after."
He looked at Chandler. Chandler made the small face of a man communicating yes, I know, please don't.
Joey came through the door approximately forty-five seconds later, with a sandwich that had been started somewhere else and was being finished here, and stopped when he saw Janice.
"Janice," he said.
"Joey!" Janice said, with the same complete delight. "Our little matchmaker! How was the rest of your night?"
Joey, who had been about to answer, glanced at Chandler, who gave him a look that communicated an entire paragraph. Joey changed his answer. "Good," he said. "Fine. Good."
The phone rang. Monica answered it, listened for a moment, and said "Ross, hang on" with the expression of someone who had just thought of something. She carried the phone to where Janice was standing and said, with a smile that was doing several things at once: "Ross, say hi to someone."
Janice took the phone with the immediate enthusiasm of someone who had been handed exactly the right thing. "Ross! It's Janice! Can you believe it? We're all here! Is it because I'm just impossible to avoid? Ha!" The laugh arrived and filled the room and went down the hallway and probably covered part of the next apartment.
Ethan leaned toward Chandler. "How did this happen?"
"She came to return a sweater," Chandler said, without moving his lips very much.
"A sweater."
"She had a sweater of mine. She said she was in the neighborhood. She's been here forty-five minutes."
"Did you ask her to stay?"
"I said come in while I get the sweater," Chandler said. "And then I couldn't find the sweater."
"Do you have the sweater?"
"I don't know where the sweater is," Chandler said. "I may not own this sweater."
Ethan looked at him with the expression of a man who had many things he could say and was choosing none of them.
Janice finished her call, handed the phone back to Monica, turned to Chandler with the expression she reserved for exits — warm, confident, leaving on her own terms. "Chandler. I'm going." She kissed him on the cheek in the specific way that was half affection and half a statement about the situation. "Call me. You know you will." She looked at Ethan. "Lovely to see you, as always." She looked at Joey with the knowing expression of someone who had not forgotten last night. "Joey. Chocolate."
Joey looked at the ceiling.
Janice left. The room exhaled.
"Chocolate?" Ethan said.
"We're not discussing it," Joey said.
The morning settled into its post-event phase, everyone finding their spots — Monica in the kitchen doing something that smelled like it was worth waiting for, Rachel on the couch with the newspaper, Phoebe cross-legged on the floor with her guitar making small adjustments that weren't quite a song yet.
Ethan sat next to Chandler on the couch and waited.
"I got drunk," Chandler said.
"I heard," Ethan said.
"Not — badly drunk," Chandler said. "The kind of drunk where everything seems like a better idea than it is. We had the champagne, and then wine, and then I think there was a digestif that Joey's card probably covered, and somewhere in that process I stopped trying to manage the situation and just—" He stopped.
"Talked," Ethan said.
"Talked," Chandler confirmed. "For a long time. About things." He looked at the coffee table. "She's known me for years, Ethan. The actual version of me, not the version I put out for general consumption. She has — she has all this information about me that I didn't give her on purpose, she just accumulated it, and she uses it to—" He paused.
"See you," Ethan said.
"Yes," Chandler said. "Which is — I don't always know what to do with that."
"Because most people don't," Ethan said.
"She stayed," Chandler said. Not explaining further. Just noting it.
"I know," Ethan said.
"I need to end it," Chandler said. "Properly. Not the Chandler way, where I say something and she decides it doesn't count. Actually end it, clearly, so she knows I mean it."
"Do you mean it?" Ethan said.
Chandler was quiet for a moment that was longer than expected.
"I don't know," he said, which was at least the honest answer.
"Then figure that out first," Ethan said. "Before you have the conversation."
Rachel, from the couch, had been listening with the half-attention she deployed when she wanted to seem not-listening but was fully engaged.
"Can I ask something?" she said.
They looked at her.
"What is actually going on?" Rachel said. "With Janice. I feel like every few weeks Chandler ends it and then she's back and then he ends it and she's back, and I've been watching this cycle for months and nobody has explained the underlying—"
"It's complicated," Chandler said.
"Everything is complicated," Rachel said. "That's not an explanation."
Ethan looked at Chandler, who made a small gesture that communicated you can, if you want.
"Chandler keeps getting back together with Janice," Ethan said, "because Janice is one of the few people who sees him very clearly and is enthusiastic about what she sees. The laugh and the drama are in the foreground, and the thing where she genuinely knows him is in the background, and he can't quite let go of the thing in the background even when the foreground is too much."
Chandler looked at his coffee. "That's—" He stopped. "That's accurate."
Rachel looked at Chandler with the expression she wore when she was understanding something that recontextualized something else. "She loves you," she said.
"Loudly," Chandler said.
"But she does," Rachel said.
"Yeah," Chandler said quietly. "She does."
The room held that for a moment.
Monica appeared from the kitchen with a plate of things, set it on the coffee table, looked around at everyone's faces, and said: "What did I miss?"
"Emotional honesty," Ethan said.
"Before nine-thirty," Monica said. "Impressive." She sat down. "Also — we need to tell you something about last night."
The thing about last night, it emerged, was the cleansing ritual.
It had been Phoebe's idea, which was its own kind of explanation. Her friend Abby — the bald one, she specified, as if this was relevant identifying information — had told her about a ritual for clearing bad romantic energy. The principle was simple: you gathered objects associated with bad relationships, you burned them, you said some words, and the energy cleared.
Monica had been skeptical. Rachel had been vaguely interested. Phoebe had been committed.
They had gathered objects — cards, a photograph, a scarf that Rachel said she didn't need to explain — and had gone to the small outdoor space behind Monica's building, which was technically a fire-use-prohibited area but was quiet and seemed appropriate.
The ritual had proceeded normally for approximately eight minutes.
"And then," Monica said.
"And then," Phoebe said.
"Whose idea was the vodka?" Ethan asked.
A pause.
"Abby said you could use spirits," Phoebe said. "I interpreted that literally."
"You poured vodka on a fire," Ethan said.
"I didn't know it would do that," Phoebe said. "In retrospect, I understand why it did that."
"How big was the—" Joey started.
"Big enough that Mrs. Kaminsky on the second floor called someone," Monica said. "They were very professional about it. We explained that it was a small controlled fire that had become briefly less controlled."
"Did they believe you?" Ethan asked.
"They were polite about it," Monica said. "Rachel made a good case."
Rachel nodded with the dignity of a woman who had talked her way out of a fire situation at eleven o'clock on Valentine's Day. "I told them we were burning old letters," she said. "Which was true."
"Did the ritual work?" Joey said.
Phoebe considered this. "The energy does feel clearer," she said. "I think the vodka may have amplified it."
"Amplified it," Chandler said.
"Accelerated the process," Phoebe said.
"The fire department accelerated the process," Ethan said.
"Everyone contributed," Phoebe said.
Joey put down his sandwich — which had been through a journey since it arrived and was now in its final phase — and looked at Chandler with the expression of a man who had made a decision.
"I need to say something," Joey said. "About last night. Specifically about me leaving."
"You left me with Janice," Chandler said.
"I did," Joey said. "And I had reasons. But the reasons were about me and not about you, and that's not—" He stopped. This was Joey making an actual apology, which operated at a different pace than Joey doing most other things. "I left you there on purpose because I wanted to go, and I told myself it was fine because you'd be fine, and you were fine, but that's luck and not because I made a good call." He looked at Chandler. "I should have stayed."
Chandler looked at him for a moment.
"You owe me," Chandler said. "Something significant."
"I know," Joey said.
"To be determined," Chandler said.
"To be determined," Joey agreed.
"Also," Chandler said, "the champagne was excellent. So there's that."
"Good," Joey said.
They sat with that for a moment.
"What's chocolate?" Ethan said.
Joey pointed at him. "Not discussing it."
"Joey."
"Ethan."
"It's going to come out eventually," Ethan said. "These things always do."
"Then it'll come out eventually," Joey said. "On a day that is not today."
That afternoon, Chandler found the moment.
It was at Central Perk — it was always at Central Perk, which was either the right venue because it was neutral ground, or the wrong venue because everything that happened there was witnessed by everyone, and Ethan was never sure which.
Janice arrived in the coat she'd been wearing that morning, which suggested she had not gone far or had come back specifically, and sat across from Chandler with the comfortable possession of someone who knew the shape of this particular table.
Ethan was on the couch, nominally reading something, actually watching because he was not going to pretend otherwise.
Chandler had his coffee. He set it down. He looked at the table. He looked at Janice.
"I need to say something," he said.
"Okay," Janice said, in the warm, undisturbed tone of someone who had heard Chandler begin sentences this way before and knew where they went.
"I don't think—" He stopped. Started again. "I think we keep—" Another stop. He pressed his fingers to his forehead. "Janice. I want to be clear this time. Because last time I wasn't clear, and the time before that I wasn't clear, and I think you deserve clear."
Janice's expression shifted slightly — not hurt, not defensive, just more present. Listening.
"I don't think we have a future," Chandler said. "And I know I've said that before, and I know you have reasons for not believing it, and some of those reasons I gave you by not meaning it when I said it. But I mean it now." He looked at her. "We're not going to work, Janice. We've tried it enough times to know."
Janice was quiet for a moment. The restaurant hummed around them.
Then she smiled — not the full performance smile, not the one that came with the laugh. Something smaller and realer.
"Chandler," she said.
"I mean it this time," he said.
"I know," she said, which surprised him.
"You — know?"
"I can tell the difference," she said. "Between the times you don't mean it and the times you do." She looked at her coffee. "This is a time you do."
Chandler stared at her. "Then why—"
"Because the other times were real too," she said. "The getting back together. That was real. You calling me for New Year's — real. Last night — real." She looked at him with the directness she always had underneath the performance. "You're not wrong that it doesn't work. You're just also not wrong that it's real. Both of those things are true."
Chandler didn't say anything for a moment.
"I know," he said finally.
"I know you know," she said.
They sat there for a moment in the particular quiet of two people who have understood each other.
"Are you okay?" Chandler said.
"I will be," Janice said. "I usually am." She stood up, put on her coat with the decisive movement she used when she'd made a decision and was executing it. "You're going to be okay too, Chandler. Eventually you're going to find someone who stays, and you're going to stop being so surprised by it."
She leaned down, kissed him once on the top of his head — not the cheek, the top of his head, which was somehow more final — and walked out.
Chandler watched her go.
Ethan, from the couch, said nothing for thirty seconds. Then: "You okay?"
"Yeah," Chandler said. He picked up his coffee. Put it down. "She said she could tell the difference. Between the times I meant it and the times I didn't."
"She's known you for a while," Ethan said.
"I didn't know she could tell," Chandler said.
"She's perceptive," Ethan said. "Under the laugh."
Chandler looked at the door she'd gone through. "I feel—" He stopped. "I don't know what I feel."
"That's probably the right feeling," Ethan said. "For what just happened."
Chandler nodded slowly.
From outside, through the window, the February afternoon was gray and unremarkable, the city moving through its Thursday with the practical disregard for anyone's particular emotional situation that was one of New York's less comforting qualities and also one of its more useful ones.
"Buy you a coffee?" Ethan said.
"I have a coffee," Chandler said.
"Another coffee," Ethan said. "On me."
Chandler looked at him. Then at his coffee. Then at the door.
"Yeah," he said. "Okay."
Ethan flagged Gunther.
Gunther, who had been watching all of this from behind the counter with the focused attention of a man professionally committed to not appearing to watch, came over immediately.
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