Part Two: What a Friend Who Loves You Will Do
Maro had been Ani’s closest friend since university — they had studied on adjacent tracks, design and medicine, and had found in each other the particular complementarity of people whose minds work differently and are therefore consistently interesting to each other. Maro was now a physician at a mid-sized private hospital, a woman of considerable competence and equally considerable loyalty, which was why Ani was calling her and not anyone else.
They met at the café on Abovyan Street where they had been meeting for fifteen years, at the corner table in the back, and Ani told her everything. The phone, the late nights, the trips, the quality of the distance between her and Arman that she could not prove was deliberate and could not convince herself was imaginary. She told it in the precise, sequential way she told everything, with the detail of someone who has been organizing and reorganizing the information for weeks and can now deliver it in order.
Maro listened without interrupting. When Ani finished, Maro was quiet for a moment.
“What do you want to know?” she asked. Not what do you think is happening or are you sure — the questions of someone looking for an excuse to dismiss the concern. Just: what do you want to know.
“I want to know who he is,” Ani said. “Not who he performs being. Who he actually is.”
Maro turned her coffee cup in both hands. “And you think the way to find that out is —”
“I need to see how he responds to something,” Ani said. “Not to an accusation, not to a confrontation — he’ll prepare for those, he’ll have the right words ready. I need to see how he responds when he thinks I can’t see him.”
Maro looked at her steadily. “You want to remove yourself from the equation.”
“Yes.”
“And you want to see what he does in the space.”
“Yes.”
Maro was quiet again. Outside the café window, the street went about its summer business — a tram, pedestrians, a vendor arranging fruit in the afternoon heat. Then Maro said: “Tell me what you’re thinking. The whole plan.”
Ani told her. It was detailed. She had been working on it for two weeks.
When she finished, Maro said: “This is not a small thing.”
“I know.”
“And if you’re wrong — if he arrives at that hospital and he falls apart —”
“Then I’m wrong,” Ani said. “And I’ll live with having done something drastic to find that out. But Maro —” she paused. “I don’t think I’m wrong.”
Maro looked at her friend across the table — the dark circles, the careful composure that was covering a sustained and significant distress — and she made her decision the way she made most decisions: based on what she could see in front of her.
“All right,” she said. “Tell me exactly what you need.”
