Later on that same evening, Sylvie and Cassandra sat in Adirondack chairs all the way out at the End of the World.
“So,” Sylvie said to Cassandra, “what’s the latest around here?”
“Hmm. Well, sexually speaking, black boys are all the rage on campus.”
“Oh, great. All two of them.”
“Well. Pansy Chapin’s sleeping with that guy Kojo, you know, the one who played Mercutio in that production of Romeo in the Hood.”
“But wait, what about that tall, handsome boyfriend of hers, the one she’s always visiting with the duplex on Central Park South? She’d better not let him go! He must be loaded.”
“Oh, he is loaded, really, really loaded, and he’s still in the picture. They’re engaged now. He popped the question on Torcello, this island off the coast of—”
“Venice! Oh my God, I went there. It’s gorgeous.”
“I bet it is! Actually, she’s in the Hamptons with him this weekend. Kojo’s just something on the side.”
“That poor guy. She’s always cheating on him.”
“Pansy says it’s true.”
“What?”
“What they say about black guys.”
“What they say about their cocks?”
“Uh-huh. The morning after she first slept with him, we were all sitting around at brunch and Pansy held up a banana to demonstrate.”
“Jesus. I didn’t think that any intelligent heterosexual woman actually thought that size mattered. Do you think it matters?”
“Oh no. Not at all! Sex is a really mental thing with me.” Cassandra liked her men upper-class and intellectual, with a fine, sadistic verbal edge. She had a long-term Harvard boyfriend who sometimes came and visited her on campus. In spite of his existence and the status of their supposedly monogamous relationship, she was forever urging her friends to go crash frat parties to meet men at nearby Williams College, though out of the lot of them, only the aforementioned Pansy Chapin and Gala Gubelman, famous campus beauty and kleptomaniac, had been up for tagging along, and that was just because Pansy, from a young age, was always on the lookout for a rich husband and Gala was generally held to be a nymphomaniac.
“Me, too,” Sylvie agreed.
“Oh! I can’t believe I forgot. You heard the one about the modern dancers?”
“Yes!”
“Those poor girls. And now their parents are suing.”
“What for?”
“Damages. They say the school should have put up a sign in the dance studio saying not to get too close to the windows.”
“Oh, come on. What idiot would need a sign telling them something like that?”
“But modern dancers are idiots.”
“Oh, right. Of course they are. Isn’t that why we’ve always hated them?”
“Yeah, well that, and they always get all the guys. Not that I want the guys you have to pick from at Bennington! But still.”
It is often remarked that friends and lovers need to like the same things. What is less frequently remarked upon—but is a far more enduring bond, in the long run—is that they need to hate the same things, too. Sylvie and Cassandra did, with a high, sparkling vehemence that never got old. Having attended, long before Bennington, a progressive arts high school in the Boston suburbs, notorious for the high number of students who did stints in the chic mental institution McLean, they had been given a wealth of material. If you are lucky enough to attend a progressive school at an impressionable age, you will have things to loathe for a lifetime.
Sylvie yawned and asked: “By the way. Those girls. Were the two of them lesbians, do you think?”
“So what if they were? Does it matter? They’re dead.”
“I just wondered. It would be kind of a nice romantic twist if they were. Dying that way. Together.”
“Well, I guess it would be kind of romantic if you put it that way. It would be like something out of a ballet! And they were both so incredibly beautiful, I have to say. Chelsea had these amazing curly long lashes.” She sighed, remembering.
“I don’t know. All the modern dancers at Bennington are so incredibly beautiful. After a while they all just blend together.”
“Yeah.” Cassandra paused. “You know something? I’ve always just hated the name Chelsea.”
“That matters?”
“Well, it just occurred to me as I was thinking about them. Chelsea! You know what it reminds me of? When some stupid person dares to call me Cassie! Cassie!” She shuddered.
Sylvie thought of admonishing Cassandra for being such a vain little bitch when two of their classmates were dead. Then, because Cassandra was her best friend and because they could say anything to each other, decided against it.
“I don’t like the name Beverly either, to tell you the truth,” Sylvie said.