"It's not, it isn't important for me either. I'm nobody — just an investor. I didn't even invest all that much. I only go to his fitness center to lift weights. I am — how do you say — one of his more silent of silent partners; and I involve myself — I don't involve myself in his business or his personal business and hope he isn't involving himself in mine. My life for now is a lot of books in my graduate studies and not so many dates. "
"Good for you — I mean for both things" she said. "Women and business might make a man look good on the outside but it's cancer on the real human being inside. You don't need a woman."
He was sullen for a moment. "You and I are just friends anyway," he said irritably and avoided looking into her face.
"Yes, but there is no 'just.' Friendship is the only thing that has the possibility of being pure—people who enjoy being in each other's company and admire each other without thinking about the advantages and opportunities to be gained in a merger, people who aren't needing the presence of some partner to get the addictive high of this love rush, and all the rest of it." She looked toward the front of the coffee shop where a teenager was squeaking the soles of his tennis shoes against the floor while he waited for his order.
"That's a god awful sound," she said.
"Do you think God is awful?" he asked.
"I said that the squeaking sound that guy is making is god awful- 'God awful' is a colloquial expression. It just means very bad. The noise of those shoes is incessant." She smiled awkwardly at her irascibility, her innate peculiarities that weren't so pleasant and difficult to part from. "I'll turn the tables on you if I can. Do you think God is awful?"
"I do, if He exists!"
"You go to church."
"With my sister, brother-in-law, and their family. We go on occasion. We aren't believers. Catholic Mass is similar to Russian Orthodox services and it makes my sister feel like she is back in St. Petersburg."