The Liar's Dictionary

I remember that she had rubbed her ear and I thought it was kind she took time to answer such a dumb question. It’s not like I had a good answer for it either. And she cleared her throat, raised a fist in mock mic-stance and in her terrible singing voice warbled an impression of Sinatra’s hit ‘Too Marvelous for Words’ and I remember she winked and twelve glaciers’ worth of tension melted beneath my throat and some new desire beneath that developed its own Brinell scale over the pub garden table, and yes, every flower in the Red Lion’s hanging baskets might as well have swapped their stigmas for bugles and their petals for clappers in that moment, and it was fine, it was fine, to be here with her, thinking about the difference between ‘being out’ and ‘going out’ and she was still singing in that moment and my mind was getting ahead of itself and I remember that I knew I should be concentrating, should stop staring at her mouth for anything other than listening very precisely or definitely, and then a wink could have been a mistake or a tic, and I smiled as she sang off-key.

I probably said, ‘That’s nice.’

‘You use that word too much,’ Pip said. And she ground her teeth a little, very very.

Five years later, helping me sort through index cards for God-knows-what because that is what love sometimes had to be, ‘There’s no noun pornography in here,’ Pip said abruptly, fanning a spread of blue definitions across the desk. ‘Do you think that’s significant?’

‘Why on earth are you looking that word up?’

‘No reason,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry you’re bored,’ I said, tetchily. ‘This is what my job is. Boring.’

‘I’m having a whale of a time,’ Pip declared. She pelicanned. ‘A prodigious time.’

‘I’m pretty sure that’s not what prodigious—’

‘It can’t be that they didn’t have pornography,’ Pip mused on, regardless. ‘Perhaps they just didn’t have the word for it.’

‘Or they did and Swansby’s just didn’t include it.’

‘Jesus Christ, never mind that: did you know pip

refers to various respiratory diseases of birds—’

I had looked up pip (n.) and (v.) very early in what once might have been called our courtship. Our stepping-out or not-out out-going outings. ‘Various respiratory diseases of birds, esp. poultry, when accompanied by a horny patch on the tip of the tongue.’ I decided to keep this definition out of the three years’ worth of Valentine’s cards.

I preferred pip (v. transitive) of a chick: to crack (most likely the shell of the egg) when hatching.

It felt good to watch Pip discover this pipfact for herself, pip me to the post before I could tell her.

Love is often using words like maybe or most likely to soften a blow, or using words like like

when really you mean indefinitely and using the word definitely to imply anything can ever be anything other than a suggestion or an impression.

I often had cause to remember this line while working in Swansby’s: ‘Too precise a meaning erases the mystery of your literature.’ I think I first came across it in one of my pointless essays for a pointless degree for a pointless internship at an end-of-the-line encyclopaedic dictionary. I had underlined the – what, axiom? motto? – on my essay notes.

‘What would be in your personal dictionary?’ Pip asked me. It was January so the light had vanished from my window, and we were working as long a day in Swansby House as I could ever remember.

I stretched my arms and pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘I don’t know if there’s anything new to say.’

‘That’s the ambition of the woman I love,’ Pip said, and came around the back of my chair to wrap an arm gently about my shoulders.

What things in the world do I want to define for other people that might otherwise be overlooked? Coming up with words is a particular kind of weird creative peristalsis: memory is involved, and self-awareness and absorption. The image is of someone tapping your brain as one might tap a trunk for syrup.

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.

I thought: a word for how I always mistype warm as walm. Silly things. A word for knowing when the pasta is perfectly cooked just by looking at it. Crucial-silly things. A word for when you’re head-over-heels in love with someone and you’re both just burbling nonsense at each other, forgivably. A word for mispronouncing words that you had only ever seen written down. A word for your favourite songs that can never be over-listened to. A word for the great kindness of people who, unseen, take care to release insects that are trapped in rooms. A word for being surprised by an aspect of your physicality. A word for the way that sometimes thoughts can sit unpenetrable but snug like an avocado stone in your brain. A word for the strange particular bluish sheen of skin rolled between the fingers.

‘What about a word for not being out?’ Pip said.