Chapter 31: The One with the Fake Monica
The morning had the particular quality of a Thursday that intended to be significant — Ethan could feel it in the specific way that days felt when several things were converging at once. The defense was tomorrow. Rachel's Madison meeting was this afternoon. Sheldon was arriving in the city the day after tomorrow with his mother and, apparently, his twin sister Missy, who had decided New York was worth seeing regardless of what Sheldon's academic schedule required.
He was at his desk working through his defense remarks for the fourth time — not because they needed more work, but because reading them again was the thing his hands needed to do while his brain ran its pre-event inventory — when the phone rang.
"Sheldon Cooper," said the voice on the other end, with the specific quality of someone who considered identifying themselves by full name the correct protocol.
"Sheldon," Ethan said. "You're still coming tomorrow?"
"Saturday," Sheldon said. "Penn Station, eleven-fifteen. My mother has confirmed the train reservation. Missy is coming as well, which was not my preference but which I've accepted as a condition of the trip."
"I'll be there," Ethan said.
"My mother would like to know if there are good restaurants near Columbia," Sheldon said. "She has specific requirements. Nothing with an open kitchen — she finds it unsettling to watch food being prepared. Nothing too loud. Good pie, if possible."
"I know exactly the place," Ethan said, which was true — he was already thinking of the diner on 110th that Monica had approved, which was the relevant metric.
"She'll be pleased," Sheldon said. Then, with the slight shift in tone that meant he was moving to something he considered important: "I've been corresponding with the Physics department. Professor Hadley has agreed to let me sit in on the advanced quantum mechanics seminar starting in April."
"That's fast," Ethan said.
"I don't see the value in delay," Sheldon said. "The material won't become more relevant by waiting."
"No," Ethan agreed. "It won't." He paused. "How are you feeling about it? The move. New York."
A brief silence — the Sheldon kind that meant he was giving the question more consideration than most people gave questions.
"I find the prospect adequately interesting," he said, which Ethan had learned to translate as I'm more excited than I'm going to say directly. "The density of scientific resources in a thirty-mile radius of Columbia is significantly higher than Galveston."
"It is," Ethan said.
"And you mentioned," Sheldon said, "that there would be other people. At the appropriate level."
"I mentioned someone," Ethan said carefully. "A physicist from New Jersey. About your age, give or take. He's going to be in the city soon." He'd had the conversation with Beverly Hofstadter two weeks ago, and Leonard's arrival was being arranged. "I'll introduce you when the time is right."
"I'll assess his competence and report back," Sheldon said.
"That's one approach," Ethan said.
"It's the efficient approach," Sheldon said.
"Saturday," Ethan said. "Eleven-fifteen. I'll be at the platform."
He hung up, made a note, and went back to his defense remarks.
Beverly Hofstadter called at eleven-thirty.
She had the same quality on the phone as in person — precise, unhurried, operating from the assumption that the person she was speaking to could keep up.
"Leonard is coming to New York," she said, without preamble.
"When?" Ethan said.
"I've enrolled him in the physics program," she said. "He'll be in the city in three weeks. I've arranged housing through the university." A pause. "I want to be clear — I'm not asking you to manage Leonard. He's a capable adult."
"I understand," Ethan said.
"I'm asking you to introduce him to the city," she said. "And to the young man you mentioned. Sheldon."
"Sheldon arrives Saturday," Ethan said.
"Good," Beverly said. "Leonard finds social contexts with established peer groups easier to enter than establishing them from scratch. If there's already a group—"
"There's a group," Ethan said, thinking of Central Perk and the couch and everyone's various configurations on it. "It's a good one."
"I'll take your word for it," Beverly said. "How's the dissertation defense?"
"Tomorrow," Ethan said.
"You'll be fine," she said, in the tone of someone stating a fact rather than offering encouragement, which was somehow more useful than encouragement would have been. "The work is sound. I read the abstract you sent."
"You read it?"
"I have interdisciplinary interests," she said. "The microplastics framing is interesting. The methodology is rigorous. You'll be fine."
She hung up.
Ethan sat with the phone for a moment, then put it down, looked at his defense remarks, and felt — for the first time all week — actually ready.
Central Perk at two had the comfortable midday quality of a place that had gotten through the morning rush and was taking a breath. Ethan came in from the outside, where the March afternoon had finally committed to being warm, and found the couch fuller than he'd expected.
Monica was on one end with the expression of someone who had a story and had been waiting for the right number of people to be present before telling it.
"The credit card," Rachel said, when Ethan sat down.
"What credit card?" Ethan said.
"Monica's credit card was stolen," Chandler said.
"Three weeks ago," Monica said. "I reported it. The bank sent a new one. Standard situation." She paused. "Except then I got the itemized statement."
"And?" Ethan said.
"And whoever stole it," Monica said, "has been living what I can only describe as an aspirational version of my life." She picked up her coffee. "Lincoln Center tickets. The Barney's sale — the actual sale, not the rack. A cooking class at the Institute. Dinner at Aurelio's." She looked at the table. "Dinner at Aurelio's, Ethan. Where we took Chandler's mother."
"That's a good restaurant," Joey said.
"I know it's a good restaurant," Monica said. "That's why I'm annoyed. She has my taste."
"Did you call the police?" Ethan said.
"I called the bank," Monica said. "They're handling it. But here's the part." She leaned forward slightly. "I tracked her down."
Everyone looked at her.
"The cooking class at the Institute," Monica said. "I called and described the charge date, and they gave me the class roster — which they technically shouldn't have done, but the woman I spoke to was very helpful — and I went."
"Monica," Rachel said.
"She was there," Monica said. "In my cooking class. Using my credit card to take a class I would have taken with my own money if I'd known about it."
"What did you do?" Phoebe said.
Monica was quiet for a moment that was slightly longer than necessary.
"We talked," she said.
"You talked," Chandler said.
"Her name is Monique," Monica said. "She's from Queens. She works in insurance. She has — she has good taste, genuinely good taste, and she's been using my card because she wanted things she couldn't otherwise afford, which is not — I'm not saying that makes it okay—"
"It doesn't make it okay," Rachel said.
"I know," Monica said. "I know that. I reported it, the bank is handling it, she's going to have to deal with the consequences of that." She paused. "But we also went to the exhibit at the Met afterward because neither of us had seen it yet, and she has an interesting perspective on post-war American painting, and I — I gave her my number. For the alumni cooking program. In case she ever takes it legitimately."
The table absorbed this.
"You made friends," Ethan said, "with the person who stole your credit card."
"I made a cautious acquaintance," Monica said, with the dignity of someone drawing a specific distinction. "After the appropriate legal process completes."
"Monica," Chandler said, slowly. "You're a very specific kind of person."
"She had good taste," Monica said again, as if this explained everything.
"It doesn't justify—" Rachel started.
"I know," Monica said. "I know it doesn't. The bank knows. Monique knows. I'm just saying that separately from the legal situation, which is what it is, the person herself was—" She stopped. "She was who I would have been if I'd made different choices at twenty-two and had less of a support system." She looked at the table. "That's all I'm saying."
The table held that for a moment.
"That's actually a really generous way to see it," Phoebe said.
"It's the honest way," Monica said. "Which isn't the same as saying it was okay. It wasn't okay."
"No," Ethan said. "But how you're thinking about it is."
Monica looked at him briefly with the expression she wore when something landed right, and then picked up her coffee, and the subject moved on the way subjects did when they'd been fully said.
Rachel came back from her Madison meeting at four-thirty.
Ethan was still at Central Perk — he'd been working through his notes, doing the pre-defense thing where you've done everything you can do and you're still doing things — when she came through the door with the walk that told him before she'd said a word.
It was the walk of someone who had gotten what they went for.
She sat down. She looked at the table. She looked at Ethan.
"I got it," she said.
"The job?" Ethan said.
"The job," Rachel said. "Assistant buyer. Start in two weeks. The department head — her name is Patricia, she went to RISD, she has opinions about everything and I spent forty minutes talking to her about the fall collections and what's overplayed and what's being underestimated and she—" Rachel stopped. "She said I have instincts. She said that specifically. That I have instincts for this and they're trainable into something real."
"She's right," Ethan said.
"I know," Rachel said, and the ease with which she said it — not defensive, not performing confidence, just accepting a true statement — was itself a thing worth noting. Three months ago she wouldn't have said I know. She would have said you think so? or really? or deflected sideways. Now she just took it in and held it.
"Rachel," Ethan said.
"Don't make it a thing," she said.
"I'm not making it a thing," he said. "I'm just—"
"It's a thing," she said, and smiled. "I know it's a thing. I'm letting it be a thing." She exhaled. "I need to tell Monica."
"Monica's going to lose her mind," Ethan said.
"In the good way," Rachel said.
"Completely in the good way," he confirmed.
She was already pulling out her wallet to leave a tip — she always tipped well, had since the first paycheck, some kind of permanent attitudinal shift from having been on the other side of it — when Phoebe came through the door with the guitar case and the particular expression she wore when she'd been playing somewhere and was still carrying the warmth of it.
She looked at Rachel. Then at Ethan. Then back at Rachel.
"You got it," Phoebe said.
"How do you—" Rachel started.
"Your whole energy is different," Phoebe said. "You're standing in your own news." She put down the guitar case and hugged Rachel properly, both arms, the full Phoebe commitment. "I'm so happy for you."
Rachel received this with the expression of someone who was genuinely happy and was letting people see that they were genuinely happy, which was its own kind of arrived-at thing.
The dreams conversation happened the way conversations like that always happened in this group — sideways, without warning, because someone said something that opened a door and the room walked through it before anyone had fully decided to.
It started with Chandler.
He'd been quiet through most of the celebration of Rachel's news — happy, present, but slightly inside his own head in the way he'd been lately since the writing conversation. He'd come in twenty minutes after Phoebe, ordered his coffee, and was sitting at the edge of the group with the comfortable half-attention of someone listening to everything while appearing to listen to some of it.
Then Monica said, to no one in particular, the way Monica sometimes said things that were technically about one topic and actually about another: "Rachel, you've been talking in your sleep again."
Rachel looked at her. "I have not."
"The walls are thin," Monica said.
"I don't talk in my sleep," Rachel said.
"You said Chandler's name," Monica said, pleasantly.
Chandler, who had been mid-sip, did the very specific thing of completing the sip in a slightly more focused way than the sip required.
"I was probably having a dream about—" Rachel started.
"About what?" Monica said.
The table had gone quiet with the particular attention of a group that had identified something worth paying attention to.
Rachel looked at Monica with the expression of someone calculating whether further resistance was worth the energy. Then she looked at the table. Then she said, with the specific dignity of someone deciding to own something: "Fine. I've been having some — there have been some dreams. They're not — they're just dreams. They don't mean anything specific."
"They mean something," Phoebe said, in the certain but non-judgmental way she said things she was sure about.
"What kind of dreams?" Joey said, with the complete attention of a man who had been handed an interesting topic.
"They're not appropriate for full description," Rachel said.
Chandler had the expression of a man who was trying very hard to look like he was not particularly interested in this conversation and was not succeeding.
"Was I good?" he said, because Chandler's self-preservation instincts had apparently decided that self-aware humor was the correct defense mechanism.
"You were fine," Rachel said, which was not the same as answering.
"Fine," Chandler repeated.
"In the dream," Rachel said. "Obviously."
"Obviously," Chandler said.
Joey raised his hand. "Am I in any of the dreams?"
"Joey," Rachel said.
"That's not a no," Joey said.
"It's not relevant information," Rachel said.
"Also not a no," Joey said.
Ethan, who had been watching this with the mild amusement of someone at a safe remove from the conversational crossfire, became less safely removed when Rachel looked at him with the expression that communicated he was not, in fact, safely removed.
"Don't look at me," he said.
"I'm not looking at you for any specific reason," Rachel said.
"You're looking at me for a reason," Ethan said.
"Dreams are just the brain processing things," Rachel said. "They're not — they're just neural activity. They don't mean—"
"Rachel," Ethan said.
"You were in one," she said. "It was brief. It's not a thing."
"Okay," he said.
"It's really not a thing," she said.
"I believe you," he said.
"Good," she said.
"Good," he said.
Across the couch, Ross had been listening to all of this with the particular expression of someone who had not been mentioned and was performing equanimity about not being mentioned with more visible effort than the performance required.
"What about me?" he said, finally, with the careful tone of a man who had decided that asking directly was better than not asking and wondering.
Rachel looked at him with an expression that was genuinely kind and slightly apologetic and entirely honest.
"Not yet," she said.
Ross received this with the specific expression of a man filing something under information to be processed later and deciding that later was the right time.
"Okay," he said.
"It's just dreams," Rachel said. "They don't—"
"I know," Ross said. "It's fine."
It was the kind of fine that had something else in it, which everyone at the table registered and nobody named, because there were things that needed more space than a coffee shop conversation and this was one of them.
Ethan looked at Ross briefly. Ross looked back with the expression of a man who was okay, actually, and just needed a minute.
Ethan gave him the minute.
The afternoon went on being the afternoon — warm through the windows now, the March-becoming-April thing finally happening outside, the city moving through its early evening with the specific energy of a day that had been a lot of things and was settling into what it was going to be.
Rachel's news sat in the room like something good that had arrived and intended to stay.
Tomorrow was the defense.
Saturday was Sheldon.
Three weeks after that, Leonard.
The shape of things was changing, which was what shapes did when they were alive.
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