X Marks the Spot

For reasons that aren’t completely clear to anyone, Amanda’s friend Janet has stopped talking to her.

            According to Amanda, it all started very suddenly. One minute, they were furiously exchanging gossipy WhatsApp messages and making plans for dinner on Friday night, and then on Wednesday afternoon, Janet just stopped replying to Amanda.

            “Maybe she didn’t get your messages?” Saffy suggested.

            Amanda pursed her lips. “I don’t think so. All my messages have two blue ticks.”

            Saffy tried again. “So maybe she received them, but she didn’t read them? She sort of looked at them, you know, but then got distracted?”

            “What kind of distraction could that be?” Amanda sighed. “She was busy texting in the middle of delivering her second child. And also right in the middle of her mother’s funeral service, she was remotely updating her cousins in San Francisco and Sydney!”

            Saffy’s bosom deflated. “Well, maybe she just hates you now!”

            “Between her last message at lunch and 3pm?”

            “Have you tried calling her?”

            “Yes, several times, but it just goes to voicemail.”

            “Damn caller ID! What about calling her from a different number?”

            “Tried that too. And anyway, Janet’s like me. She never answers an unknown number.”

            Saffy rolled her eyes. “You guys are so weird. I mean, all numbers are going to be unknown if you don’t answer them, right? If you answer them, they won’t be unknown anymore!”

            Amanda turned to me for help. I shrugged. “In an odd way, it makes complete sense,” I told her.

            So, a few days passed. Every so often, Amanda would send a quick note to Janet. Hello? Are you there? Hello? Why aren’t you replying? Hello? Did I say something to offend you? Hello? Will you speak to me, please? Hello? I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.

            And each time, the messages appeared with two blue ticks. And each time, deafening radio silence.

            “What did you do to her?” Saffy asked at one stage.

            “I have no idea!” Amanda wailed. “We were just making plans for lunch and I said that I wouldn’t mind trying this new vegetarian spot in town and…”

            “Oh,” Saffy sighed. “That’s it! She probably hates you because you’re vegetarian now!”

            Amanda blinked. “What?”

            “Oh, there are some people who hate having vegetarians for friends. Cramps their style. Janet’s probably one of those people!”

            “Well, that makes no sense,” Amanda protested. “Her mother is vegetarian!”

            Saffy’s bosom inflated triumphantly. “And did you not tell me that she’s not spoken to her mother in years?”

            Amanda was astonished. “Oh my God, I must have told you that like ten years ago! You can’t remember the name of your CEO, but you can remember that piece of obscure family history of someone you’ve met only once?”

            Saffy gasped at the broadside. “Hey! My CEO is Czech, and his name has like twenty consonants in it! How are you supposed to remember something when you can’t even pronounce it? It’s worse than Wakandan!”

            “Which you seem to be getting quite fluent in, by the way.”

            “It is my kimoyo!” Saffy replied serenely, channeling her fiercest Black Panther avatar. “I am not any old majambazi!”

            Sharyn thinks Amanda is wasting her time, and certainly wasted no time in telling her so. “Aiyoh! She dohn wan to talk to you, why you must keep ka-chow her?”

            “But I need to know what I did wrong!”

            “And den? You know what you did wrong, you win 4D, issit?”

            Amanda hesitated, well aware that, already, this conversation wasn’t going well for her. “Uhm, no, but at least it will give me some closure.”

            “Alamak! What for you want closure?” Sharyn demanded in the kind of tone that her children would have recognized and made them tremble. “Some people are liddat, one! Sah-dun-lee, doh wan to talk to you. Dey got new fren, mah! What for waste time with old fren? Is same as she go buy iPhone 3!”

            Amanda later said nothing quite boosts a person’s confidence level like being told she’s like an iPhone 3.

            “She’s sure got a way with metaphors, doesn’t she?” Saffy said. 

            “I am not an iPhone 3!” Amanda said firmly. “And I will not be treated like one!”

            “No, you are not!” Saffy said loyally. “You are Hadari Yao!”

            Amanda looked lost. “Hadari who?”

            “Hadari Yao. Walker of Clouds!” Saffy said. “The goddess who protects the balance of all natural things!”

            “You really must stop talking like that,” Amanda told her. “It’s getting really weird.”