She pulls her black hair behind her shoulders. “You have two things on this list.”
“Yep.”
“Brush teeth,” she reads. “Find job.”
“I can check off the first one.” I brushed my teeth before she came over, and now the wine tastes terrible. “I should change the second to ‘find money.’ I could win the lottery.”
“Not a viable option.” She sighs. “Let’s talk for a bit before we tackle your nonlist.”
“Fine.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
I don’t have the energy to keep it secret anymore and tell her the story. Anjali’s eyes narrow until they almost close. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”
“What do you mean?” I’d glossed over the grosser stuff, unwilling to linger on it long enough to even say the words or to bother her with the details.
“You said he was a bad boss,” she says gently. “This is far beyond some insecure micromanager, Gracie.”
“I know.”
She frowns and moves her glass from hand to hand. “Again, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“You would have told me to quit.”
“Right, and?”
“I need that job. Needed. I’ve been looking for months and there’s nothing out there. You would have kept asking me about my job search.”
“I’m not that bad,” says Anjali. She grimaces at the look I shoot her. “Sorry, maybe I am. But I’m upset you didn’t want to talk about it with me.”
“I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. Ever. At all.”
“Problems don’t go away because you ignore them. We could have thought of a plan together.”
“Like what, a sting?” It’s easier to turn this into a joke.
“We’d mic you up in the bathroom before sending you into the boardroom.” She cranes her head left to pretend-whisper into the fake mic in her lapel. “We have eyes on Walrus.”
“Subtle.”
“Thanks.” She sips her wine. “Seriously, tell me next time. It’s better to talk it out.”
“Next time I get sexually harassed by my boss and fired? Definitely I will call you.”
“Good.” Anjali nods, satisfied, but then her expression changes. “That’s not what I meant.”
I start laughing and she hits me with a pillow.
“There won’t be a next time,” she bellows. “That’s the fucking point.”
We calm down and I sigh. “I don’t want to talk about work anymore.”
“Okay. How’s your mom?” Anjali only met her a couple of times back when we were in university but she knows the story. Part of the reason our friendship rekindled is that I saw her social media post on helping an aunt with Alzheimer’s.
“Good.”
Anjali glares at me. “Are we about to have the same talk about your mom as we did about your boss? The trust-your-friends talk I gave twenty seconds ago?”
She’s right. “She lives in the past more often. Her Alzheimer’s is slow but it’s progressing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too.” That’s the best I can expect now, and I don’t want to go into the mess of feelings I have about Mom because I’m not even sure about them myself. I’ve been dealing with the situation rather than analyzing it, and I’m happy with that. Anjali senses this and turns the conversation to a workplace drama that we happily dissect as we assign outlandish ulterior motivations to all players.
We drink another glass of wine and finish the chips and talk about my new skincare routine （now including double cleansing, toner, and a shitload of moisturizer that guarantees smooth skin into my crone years） and Anjali’s crush on the guy at the gym that she decided she’s never going to pursue. “If it’s a mess, I’d have to find a new gym and this one’s cheap as hell,” she says.
Anjali slops more wine into our glasses, then grabs a notepad and a pen. “Enough of this. I came here to drink wine and organize your life, and it looks like we’re almost out of wine.”
I snuggle back into velvety pillows that were specifically bought for the purpose of snuggling. “What’s first?”
She taps the pen on the paper. “We can go about this two ways. Practical or blue sky.”
“Practical.”
“Boring but okay.”
I tip my glass back and frown at the ceiling.