By the time karaoke was over, the girls were thoroughly drunk and decided to go to one of the many Greek restaurants in the neighborhood for taramosalata and warm pita bread, and deep blue bowls of avgolemono soup.
“So, I got the scoop,” said Gala. “Also, is Orpheus totally going to get back together with me, or what? Mission accomplished! Anyway, get this. She’s thirty-three.”
“Who is?”
“Lee.”
“Lee?” repeated Sylvie. “The chick Orpheus is sleeping with?”
“Wait, hold on a second.” This from Cassandra. “Orpheus is sleeping with a thirty-three-year-old?”
“Uh-huh. See. There’s no way he’s not going to get back together with me. And I made myself perfectly—available.”
“Did you ever,” muttered Sylvie, helping herself to more taramosalata. “You know, I’m just crazy about Mediterranean food. You could almost consider living out here, just for that. This stuff is cheap.”
“Yeah, but,” said Cassandra. “I mean, I know Orpheus’s apartment is, like, enormous by New York standards, but this neighborhood—it’s ugly and it smells. You might want to eat ethnic food sometimes, but you wouldn’t want to have to smell it, day in, day out.”
“Nobody lives in Queens,” said Sylvie definitively, for nobody they knew, aside from the perverse Orpheus, did. Also, Sylvie couldn’t help but be proud of herself for getting in on the Fort Greene wave before everybody else did. This way, she had that uniquely New York satisfaction of being proud to say she had lived in a neighborhood before it got gentrified and reaping the benefits of still living there after it did.
“Sylvie! Cassandra! Let’s dish. What the hell do you think that Orpheus is doing with a thirty-three-year-old?”
“I think the better question is, what is a thirty-three-year-old doing with Orpheus?” Sylvie offered.
“Oh, come on. Orpheus is hot. He’s a musician.”
“Bennington boy hot. Not real world hot. That’s different.”
“What makes me sad,” mused Cassandra, “is the idea of a grown woman being reduced to sleeping with a Bennington boy. In the real world. Aren’t there any other men she could meet in all of New York City?”
“Maybe older women are good in the sack,” said Sylvie. “You hear about that sometimes. Sexual peak and all that.”
The girls had heard about it, but that does not mean that they believed it. They shook their heads and agreed to order some pistachio baklava for dessert, the conundrum of Lee and her thirty-three-year-old charms, or lack thereof, forgotten altogether. And as soon as possible they returned to the subject of their own sex lives, so much more fascinating and fulfilling than any older woman’s could possibly be.
“What ever happened with that guy you mentioned the last time I saw you, Sylvie? It sounded like maybe there was a new guy.”
“What guy?”
“Oh, I think you said he was, like, this really up-and-coming fashion photographer or something…”
Sylvie now had a lackluster day job touching up photos of celebrities at a fashion agency in the meatpacking district and was felt by her friends to be “in” with fashion people as a result. (This was how she had come to let drop to Cassandra once, over the phone, “The other day, Scarlett Johansson stopped by the office to see this guy Federico, he’s her personal makeup artist. And guess what? On a good day, your figure is really pretty much exactly like Scarlett Johansson’s!” “Oh my God, really?” Cassandra had squealed, not stopping to ask just whose figure Sylvie thought her’s resembled on a bad day.)
“Oh, that guy,” Sylvie said now. “Him. The one I met at one of those pretentious loft parties in SoHo, right. He keeps texting me and begging me to come over, but.”
“But what? Wasn’t he any good?”
“I guess. But wait! Didn’t I tell you? I know I told Cassandra.”
“What?” Gala pounced, praying for something dirty.
“Ugh, well, this is embarrassing, but. I drank a ton of sangria, back at the loft, back when we were dancing. That stuff was delicious! And free. Anyway the point is—we didn’t use protection. We ended up having sex in the backseat of a cab. The funny thing was, that was way better than the sex we had once we got back to his place. I think it was exciting just because, you know, I never take cabs since it’s not like I can afford them. So it seemed all glamorous at the time. But when I got to his place, to tell you the truth I just wasn’t that excited anymore. And then, the next morning, I had to hightail it to Duane Reade with a hangover and get the morning-after pill, ASAP. He paid for it, though. Thank God! Or I would have been screwed.”
“Ah! That was really thoughtful of him, Sylvie! Guys don’t always do that, you know.”
“They don’t?” asked Cassandra, thinking, as she did so, how very grateful she was to have a steady boyfriend back in Boston and to not have to have casual sex, as Sylvie and Gala evidently did. So degrading, she thought. Which, for the record, is what people who have not yet had casual sex always think until they try it out for themselves.
“So,” she heard Gala asking Sylvie now, “was he as good as Ludo was? Or can nobody else compare?”
“Ludo! That bastard. The last time I ever saw that guy, it was when I quit, remember? We were all having lunch at his studio and I had just figured out he was sleeping with that new girl I couldn’t stand, Katarina, the one who always used to wear those stupid python pants, and I decided right then and there to give my notice and throw a roast chicken in his lap!”
“Oh, that’s right, he always used to give you guys roast chicken from FreshDirect!”
“Uh-huh, that was his idea of payment. Bastard,” said Sylvie again, really stewing this time. “When you stop to think that his family owns diamond mines!”
“Wait, did you sleep with Ludo?” Cassandra said, furrowing her brow. “Because if you did, you never told me.”
“Oh, what, do I have to tell you everything?”
“Well—yes.”
“She told me!” piped up Gala, not very helpfully, Sylvie thought. Gala loved getting in the middle—of best friends or of couples: it didn’t matter which.
Sylvie sighed, annoyed with the both of them right now.
“It was just a fling, Cassandra.”
“Oh, Sylvie! Come on! It was just the best sex of your life.”
Both girls glared at her.
“What?” demanded Gala Gubelman. Selfish, she polished off the last piece of baklava. Pistachio was her favorite. “After all! Flings always are.”
Later on that night, while the girls were on the long train ride all the way back to Brooklyn and chattering among themselves, Lee bedded Orpheus briskly and left his apartment, not in the least in love but fully delighted with the experience nonetheless, only to stop at the taco truck for a salted tongue empanada. Such bliss, treating oneself to a greasy, solitary meal after a good bout of meaningless sex. As she bit into the empanada, savoring the little touches of the radish and lime sprinkled on top, she recalled the spectacle of those poor, desperate younger women prancing around Orpheus’s apartment earlier that evening. Bennington girls! thought Lee to herself, digging into her empanada. She herself had graduated many years ago now from Sarah Lawrence, so she knew what she was talking about. They were so incredibly young and really fucking annoying.