“You know, I really don’t want to sleep with my father.”

I was so embarrassed. There we were, alone in the office that Friday afternoon, and Ginny had just let me know that she often overheard my telephone conversations. I was startled at that. I stammered out some sort of apology and told her I hoped she hadn’t heard anything upsetting, and that’s when she made the father statement. “Oh shit,” I thought: “Busted.” I talked daily to Hannah on the phone, and we discussed everyone we knew, so of course I described Ginny’s affair with the old man. Who wouldn’t? A relatively attractive 40ish woman in bed with a 75 year old guy…

The fact is, I never said Ginny wanted to sleep with her father. What Hannah and I had been discussing was Ginny’s track record with older men. This was not the first time she had sex with someone more than 30 years her senior. I’d known Ginny for two decades, and this one was at least her sixth. She was a patsy for any older, courteous gentleman who let her know he adored her. No, Ginny didn’t want to sleep with her father. But she seemed to want something from a man his age.

My dad was a great dad. Hannah’s dad was a great dad. Neither Hannah nor I would be charmed by a flirtatious older man. We would feel distinctly uncomfortable and get far away fast. But Ginny lapped up the attention. She found the old guys debonair. She took them seriously as men.

I should have said it then. Something like: “I don’t think you want to fuck your father; I never said you did. But the fact that you’re consistently attracted to men his age who treat you well: I think you’d better look at that.” But she stood before me, short and blocky, blonde and bosomy, almost vibrating with apparent determination to speak up to me. I don’t know. I think I didn’t want to quash that spirit.

Ginny hates everyone she loves, and I’m in her top five. Me, her mother, her two brothers, and her husband who happens to be my brother. I didn’t understand what “passive aggressive” meant till I met her. Ginny is almost always resenting someone, and you can tell who’s on the top of her shit list because she speaks the sweetest to that person. She’ll avoid the conversation if possible, but if not, she’ll be amazingly nice. Time and again I’ve stepped into her office and she has signaled that she’s trapped on a phone call but that I should wait. Then I’ve watched her, gushing good service with her voice into the mouthpiece while she’s flipping the client off with her hand or aiming her index finger toward her open mouth in that universal gag pantomime.

So I really think I was pleased, all in all, that Ginny confronted me about my telephone calls. The truth is, I didn’t mind that she overheard.

Hannah and I are best friends, and our friendship is sustained by telephone. Our schedules and locations are such that we only get together every six weeks or so, but we talk at least every other day. We know each other’s phone voices and mannerisms better than we’ll ever know our hand gestures or faces. I’m sure I’ll take her business telephone number to my grave.

We met in college, our first year, and that’s when we began telling each other our stories. We were constantly talking and sometimes analyzing. We keep each other honest; we both try not to rewrite. We’ve watched others revise their personal plots. We’re mystified by that process.

We wouldn’t have wanted Ginny to hear us discussing her weight, or her selection of those godawful polyester big blouses, under which her breasts protrude like the prow of a luxury liner. But we wouldn’t have minded if she heard our comments about her affairs.

When I met Ginny she was 25. I was 30. That was 20 years ago. She came to work in my office, assigned to assist me, and we got friendly. She was interesting and competent, but she was promiscuous when she drank. And she drank almost every night. She used to go to one of the many Marina bars and swallow her vodka in several arrangements, and then she left with some older fellow, and gave him head in his car. Ginny generally hated herself the next morning.

It wasn’t long before she tried to kill herself. Most of the folks who talked about it said it was a cry for help, but I thought she meant it. She took a full bottle of barbiturates with a fifth of her favorite vodka, and if she hadn’t been so experienced at drinking she would have passed out before calling her old friend Betty in Fresno, who called Ginny’s mother, who called the cops, who got there in time to bring her back.

Afterward I had to take care of her, because her mother and her brothers wouldn’t. For their various reasons, which they tried once, twice and more than thrice to justify to me, they just couldn’t be with Ginny right then. I had to be.