Bennington Girls Are Easy (11 page)

“H
ey, next time do you think that you could remember to turn your phone off?”

Edward rolled away from Cassandra. His disapproval of her, though she could not recognize it, was starting to be a hallmark of their relationship. They had just finished having sex on the staircase. The whole time, Cassandra’s phone had been ringing in her purse, which was downstairs in the living room.

“Sorry.” Cassandra rubbed his head and drew him close to her again. “I’d better go and check it, though. It’s probably Sylvie.”

“Sylvie…” muttered Edward. He’d never met her but he didn’t much like her. Sylvie would have been most delighted to assure him that the feeling was mutual.

“God, four times she called. I hope everything’s all right.”

Edward got up and put on his Brooks Brothers boxers, bracing himself for having to listen to Cassandra gab on the phone to a female friend, which was
not
his favorite sound in the world, to tell you the truth. He much preferred her dreamy and docile and murmuring sweet nothings in bed. When he tied her up, she didn’t speak
at all
and that was fantastic. She just kind of lay back and moaned.

“So I’m serious,” Sylvie began, and from the tone of her voice Cassandra could tell she was hopped up on iced Americanos and that it wouldn’t be easy to get off the phone anytime soon. And then Edward would get all annoyed. He didn’t like Sylvie; she could tell.

“Cassandra, I’m serious,” Sylvie repeated. “I’m starting a business, a real business. How much do you think I should hire people for?”

“Hire people?”

“People to help run the stand and sell stuff. What do you think, ten bucks an hour? Is that too high? Could I get away with eight, do you think? We’re in a recession, remember.”

“I don’t know, Sylvie. Nine? Look. Edward’s here and we’re about to get dressed to go to the club.”

They were totally just fucking right now, Sylvie thought, disgusted. So that’s why she didn’t pick up the phone when I kept calling! And asked: “Which club?” Cassandra was too self-absorbed to recognize that by asking this question Sylvie was making fun of her. Edward belonged to many different clubs and Sylvie was getting sick of hearing about them.

“Oh, there’s this lecture on Degas at the Rittenhouse Club tonight! With a cocktail hour beforehand. You know how I just love Degas! I always have.”

Cassandra had been famous at Bennington for her stoical indifference to contemporary art. A striking stance, that.

“So,” Sylvie went on. Her voice was snappish. “Here’s another thing I wanted to ask you. What do you think about muffins?”

“Muffins?”

“For people to buy in the morning. Like, I make these really good pear-bran ones…”

“I don’t know, Sylvie. I wouldn’t go out of my way to stop for a bran
anything
muffin, but maybe that’s just me. I think it has to be something people really can’t resist.”

Why are they discussing muffins? Edward wondered. What could two grown women possibly have to say to each other about muffins? And would they ever get off the phone?

“But I make amazing muffins!” said Sylvie. She was almost screaming, and Cassandra thought, Goodness, such emotion about a little thing like muffins. “My muffins are amazing. God, this is going to be great, I’m going to make so much money.”

Cassandra couldn’t help but note the change of the pronoun
we
to the pronoun
I
:
I’m
starting a business.
I’m
going to make so much money. But she was in a magical postsex haze and so none of this mattered.

“Everything you make tastes really good, Sylvie,” was all she said. “You’re a wonderful cook.”

After she got off the phone, she went and lay down in Edward’s arms.

“Sorry about that. It’s Sylvie. She’s starting this little, I don’t know, lemonade stand thing.”

Bennington girls, Edward thought. They were so hot but so damn flaky!
Sylvie was starting a lemonade stand?
He sure hoped that Cassandra wouldn’t get mixed up in a thing like that. How was it that none of her friends ever seemed to have real careers?

When Cassandra got back to Brooklyn, the apartment was in even more of a state of chaos than usual, pitchers of sticky-smelling floral teas steeping on the kitchen counter, spoons crusty with pastel frosting, and a tower of plastic containers filled with dozens and dozens of unfrosted cupcakes. Out in the hallway there were bags and bags full of rotting lemons.

“Are those—cupcakes?” Cassandra asked.

“Yes. But don’t have one!” There was panic in Sylvie’s voice. “They’re for sale.”

“When?”

“I’m going to sell them on Saturday.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“They’ll keep,” said Sylvie darkly.

T
he following afternoon, Cassandra accompanied Sylvie while she babysat Imogen. Quinn, meanwhile, had a play-date with a friend of his, Julius, and his nanny, a twenty-four-year-old linguistics major from Smith named Hannah. “That Julius is a bastard,” Sylvie remarked to Cassandra, in full view of clever little Imogen, on whom not a single word was lost. “Do you know what he told Hannah, after he met me? He said: ‘I wish Quinn’s nanny was my nanny. She’s so much prettier than you!’ Do you believe that?”

“You are prettier than Hannah,” chimed in Imogen, not because she wanted to compliment Sylvie but because it was the truth and Imogen was a great believer in speaking the truth. “Hannah’s not pretty at all.”

“Julius!” said Cassandra. “What kind of parents name their child Julius? It’s such a jerky name for a little boy. You know?
Julius.
” She rolled her eyes

“What are we going to do today?” asked Imogen, getting down to business. If she didn’t keep them on track, Sylvie and Cassandra were likely to just sit there for hours
talking
and
talking.
Imogen, not being the introspective type, was big on “doing” things. Cassandra dreaded what might be coming, so before the little girl could suggest something kid-friendly and appropriate, she said, “I have an idea.”

“Oh yeah?” said Imogen, prepared not to be impressed.

“How would you like to go lingerie shopping?”

“Cassandra!” said Sylvie.

“Oh, come on, Sylvie, I want to stock up. I feel like Edward’s getting sick of all of the stuff I have. I’d like to surprise him with something.”

“Who’s Edward?” asked Imogen.

“My boyfriend.”

“Oh. Well, so what? What does he have to do with it?”

“With what?”

“With lingerie shopping.”

“Oh—” Cassandra began. Sylvie cut in to stop her, saying: “Where did you want to go anyway?”

“I got this postcard in the mail saying that Agent Provocateur is having a sample sale. Let’s go!”

“Oh my God, a sample sale!” Now Sylvie was persuaded, if bargains were to be had.

“What’s a sample sale?”

“Oh, Imogen,” said Cassandra, almost with tenderness, “the things I’m going to teach you.”

“I think Edward is a stupid name. It sounds old.”

“Don’t worry,” said Sylvie. “He is.”

“You think
Edward
is a stupid name? What about Julius?”

Or Quinn for that matter, thought Sylvie grimly.

“I go to school with this kid named Bear.”

“Bear?” said Cassandra. “Bear? Does he have a brother named Cub?”

“No, Orlando.”

“Orlando? Bear and Orlando? Christ.”

“I want to be named Francesca. I have this friend named Francesca. But she’s not even that pretty and a Francesca should be pretty. A Francesca should be beautiful! Don’t you think so? Will you call me Francesca?”

“Okay, Francesca,” said Cassandra.

“Can I call you Cassie?”

“Fuck, no!”

“Cassandra.”

“Cassie! Cassie! Over my dead body you’ll call me Cassie.”

“Okay, Cassie.”

“If you call me Cassie ever again, I won’t take you lingerie shopping.”

“So? I’ll get my mother to take me lingerie shopping.”

“Oh, no you won’t.”

“Your mother doesn’t wear lingerie. And I should know. I do her laundry.” And then Sylvie whispered to Cassandra: “She wears those, you know, passion-killers.”

“Oh dear. Those kind of saggy cotton deals with the high waists?”

“Passion what?” asked Imogen.

“Never you mind,” said Sylvie.

They got on the train and got off in SoHo. Once they were inside the Agent Provocateur on Mercer Street, Imogen went straight for the whips. She picked up a tiny black feathered one and rubbed it between her hands. She was
in love.
She must own this whip or she
would die.

“Oh God,” said Sylvie, noticing what Imogen was doing. Cassandra was too busy scooping up fistfuls of frothy, candy-colored garter belts.

“Can I get this, Sylvie? Can I, can I? If you buy it for me, my parents will pay you back. I promise.”

“Now, Imogen—”

“Francesca! Today I’m Francesca.” Assuming this new, splendid identity, she struck a pose with the whip in the mirror. My, but blondes look well in black. The effect was very striking. She’d have to get a whole new wardrobe. She looked down at her peach-colored organic cotton blouse with deepest displeasure.

“What? My parents are rich! Why are you so worried, Sylvie? They’ll pay you back.”

“No, you’re not going to buy anything here, Imogen. But you can look. You can buy stuff here when you’re older.”

“But Cassandra’s buying stuff.”

Sylvie turned and there was Cassandra, merrily putting stuff on hold at the register. Sylvie suddenly felt utterly without interest in lingerie. What she wished she could do was go home and bake more cupcakes. She looked down at Imogen, standing there with the whip. Just think. If the lemonade stand took off, she wouldn’t have to babysit little brats like this anymore.

Somebody’s phone started ringing. “Oh, it’s Edward!” Cassandra exclaimed, all aflutter at the thought of him, and stepped outside to take the call. When she returned, she sighed and said, “I’m so disappointed.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, Edward’s coming to town this weekend and of course we’ll be staying at the Harvard Club, but—”

“This weekend? But I need you to work the lemonade stand, Cassandra.”

For ten dollars an hour? Cassandra thought of asking her, knowing full well that Sylvie expected her to do it for free.

“Oh, get Gala to do it. The sight of her is good for foot traffic, right? Just make sure she wears that cheesy American Apparel dress again. I can’t stand those dresses! They’re, like, the death of elegance, if you ask me.”

But nobody did ask you, Sylvie was thinking.

“Gala’s hot!” said Imogen.

“I’m not sure,” said Cassandra, “that I approve of little girls using words like
hot
. There’s something objectifying about it.”

“But you approve of taking them to lingerie stores?” Sylvie chimed in.

“Well, you’re her babysitter. We didn’t have to come here if you suddenly thought it was so inappropriate.”

“Can’t you get Edward to come another weekend?”

“No, he has some important meeting at the Harvard Club, is the thing. But I’m so upset because, get this! The old rooms are all booked, so we have to stay in one of the modern ones.”

“And the problem is…?”

“The old rooms have four-poster beds, see. The modern ones don’t.”

“So?”

“Well, I just love being tied to a four-poster…”

“Oh, Good Lord.”

“How does that work?” Imogen wanted to know. “How do you tie someone to a bed? Can you teach me how to do it, Cassandra? Can you? There are a bunch of beds at our house. We have five stories.”

“Oh, we just use ties,” said Cassandra, not missing a beat. “Edward’s ties. They’re beautiful. He has very nice clothes. Very classic, you know.”

“Like my daddy’s ties?”

“I guess.” Cassandra now remembered all of a sudden that she was talking to a seven-year-old. “I’m just going to buy these garter belts and then we can get going.”

“What’s a garden belt?”

“Garter belt, Francesca my friend, garter belt.”

“Is it like a garden snake? That would be funny.”

“No, it’s more like—” Sylvie sighed and held her head in her hands. “Come on, Imogen, let’s get out of this place.”

“My whip!” wailed Imogen, refusing to let it go. She was having sparkling visions of using it to boss other little girls around on the playground.

“Oh, my God!”

“What now?”

“Would you look at that lavender baby doll! The sheer one, over there! Hold on a second. I think I just
have
to have that.”

“You already have—”

“Oh, but Sylvie! Edward just loves me in lavender.”

“I would get it in black instead,” advised Imogen knowledgeably, putting down the whip with great sorrow and reluctance but figuring that her birthday was coming up and she’d ask her parents to buy it for her then. “Black looks hot on blondes, and anyway, if you get it in black it’ll make you look thinner.” She smiled. “Cassie.”

T
hree days later.

“Well, would you get a load of this?” Sylvie, on the phone to Cassandra.

“What?” Cassandra was packing her orange suitcase, en route to meet Edward at the Harvard Club in midtown. Gently she folded the lavender baby doll, imagining his capable, manly hands peeling the sheer fabric right off of her helpless, prone body.

“I’m outside, I should go back in soon. But get this. And it’s all your fault, too! Megan”—Megan was Quinn and Imogen’s mother—“just had this talk with me in the kitchen, because, get this, she walked in on Imogen tying Quinn to the bedpost the other night. And what do you think she was using to tie him up? Her father’s ties!”

“That’s kind of brilliant, actually.”

“Brilliant? This is your reaction?”

“Well, I’ve never liked the kid. She’s a bitch. But you have to admit. She’s very precocious.”

“Jesus. You can just imagine the conversation I had with Megan. It was hilarious, because you could tell she was horrified but didn’t want to act too, too horrified because then it would look like she’s uptight about sex and no liberal Brooklyn mother wants that. But actually, I don’t think they have that much sex anymore.”

“Who?”

“Megan and Dan. I see them, when they get home. I think they’re too tired.”

“Do you think Clementine’s parents still have sex?”

“Not so much.”

“Do you think any of the parents you babysit for have sex anymore?”

“Well. Being around kids so much has practically killed my libido, and I’m just the nanny. I get to go home. They don’t.”

“Hmm.”

“I don’t know, though. Clementine’s parents have only one kid, so that probably makes it a little easier to find time to have sex. But only a little.”

“Oh! By the way. I just love what they did with that place in Bed-Stuy.”

“Yeah, they bought that when you could get, like, unbelievable deals on some of those amazing old brownstones there. They have great taste, too.”

“Megan and Dan, not so much.”

“No, not so much. You know, this whole tying-people-up thing reminded me. This one time at a Bennington alumni event—”

“Where was this?” Cassandra was anxious to know, feeling pre-emptively jealous in case she had missed out on it on account of still living in Boston at the time, which was distinctly possible.

“The Salmagundi Club. I went with Gala, I remember. We only went because of the open bar. Also, because of the coke.”

“Wait, there was coke there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s entirely possible. People could have been doing it in the bathroom, I guess.”

“Isn’t that always the way?” said Cassandra nostalgically, not that she had ever actually done coke herself, but she had plenty of memories of walking in on people doing it in college and then turning away from them, befuddled.

“Yes, but, I just meant that we went to the event in order to get a coke
connection
. Gala had the name of some dealer who was supposed to have really good stuff.”

“Okay, but. Why are you telling me all this?”

“Oh right, because while Gala was talking to the dealer, I was talking to his girlfriend, I remember, and! This is what I wanted to tell you, Cassandra. They graduated in the nineties and after college what she did was move out to LA and work as a dominatrix. She made a ton of money doing that, she said. In fact, between that and what with her boyfriend being a drug dealer, they had enough money saved a couple of years after graduation to buy their own house in Laurel Canyon!”

“And the moral of the story is…?”

“Sex sells! That must be the moral of the story, I guess.”

“That’s a very old moral, you know. World’s oldest profession and all that.”

“The point is,” said Sylvie, regaining ground, “the point is, there’s your plan B, Cassandra. Assuming you have a plan A to speak of, which I’m not convinced you do. You don’t even have a job. But that’s another story.”

Because you’re not actually going to marry Edward, Sylvie was thinking. You’re going to fuck it up. Our friends know us better than we ourselves do and are capable of predicting our fates accordingly.

“Me? A dominatrix?”

“No, no, not a dominatrix, that would be ridiculous. I think Gala should become a dominatrix and you should become a, what do you call it, submissive.”

“Gala already has a job.”

“Oh, come on. Would you wish working in a gallery in Dumbo on your worst enemy? It doesn’t pay anything and she’s pretty much just a receptionist and anyway she’s already slept with most of the artists they represent, so she’s getting bored.”

“Sylvie. You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am. I’ve always said you were a natural masochist, Cassandra. And not just sexually either! On all fronts.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You ought to think about it. You ought to think about something. Do you have a plan B?”

“I guess not,” Cassandra admitted.

“Cassandra.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking. If things get really desperate”—not that she believed they ever would—“I could always pawn my great-grandmother’s wedding silver.”

Her grandmother had just passed it down to her with great fanfare, now that there was this most respectable man, Edward, in the picture, and drawing the conclusion, as Cassandra herself did, that their engagement would be announced any day now.

“Wedding silver? Wedding silver? That’s, like, a practically prewar concept.”

“But Sylvie. This stuff is gorgeous. Trust me. It weighs a ton.”

“So what, Cassandra? It’s silver.
Silver.
Nobody uses that shit anymore.”

“They don’t?”

“Do
you
? In case you haven’t noticed, we barely have a roll of paper towels in our apartment, let alone silver…Silver! I ask you.”

“But Sylvie! It’s really beautiful.”

“This isn’t Cambridge, Cassandra. This isn’t Brattle Street. You can’t just dawdle along. This is New York City! Also, it’s the twenty-first century and so far, the twenty-first century sucks. Believe me. Everybody needs a plan B!”

“Well. Louis Hawksworth is in town this week and he’s always good for two or three square meals, tops. I always have breakfast with him at that gentleman’s club he stays at in the West Fifties, remember, a full, proper breakfast with this really great crispy bacon they have, and then there’s this fancy dinner he’s taking me to at the American Academy of—”

“Louis Hawksworth? Is he still alive, that guy?” There came a memory of the
War and Peace
course she’d once taken with him, not that she’d actually read it, and how, instead of talking about the book, he’d gone totally silent for long spells at a time while gazing out the windows of the classroom at the deer grazing in the meadows. Dementia setting in, Sylvie had thought at the time.

“Oh, he’s blind as a bat, but not dead yet. I don’t think. Actually, he gave me this piece of advice I’ve been thinking about. He said, ‘Cassandra, the next time you find yourself in a cab with a man and you want to get out of paying the fare, just ask the driver to stop and get out and then, just before you walk away, lightly tap the palm of your date’s hand to your breast and say good night. You’ll get out of paying the fare
and
he’ll be dreaming about you all night long.’ He said some chick did that to him in Greenwich Village in the fifties and he’s never gotten over her.”

“In the fifties, Cassandra. That could only ever have worked in the fifties. Nowadays, nowadays the guy would expect you to go Dutch and then afterward he’d feel entitled to a blow job, just because!”

“Oh, by the way, Sylvie. Speaking of Bennington people. Pansy Chapin and I are meeting up for drinks at J.G. Melon tomorrow.”

“You would have to go uptown, for her.” At this point in her life, Sylvie went uptown under no circumstances and into Manhattan under very few.

“Oh, but I just love the Upper East Side. It’s so classical.”

“You would. Edward must be rubbing off on you, I guess. Has he ever even been to Brooklyn, that guy?”

“Edward? Brooklyn? Probably not. Has Pansy, do you think?”

“No!”

The girls laughed and then Cassandra said: “Actually. It doesn’t really matter because I’m not going to do it, but Pansy asked me if I wanted to go in on getting this apartment with her next month. She says she found this amazing place on Seventy-Ninth and Second but can’t afford it without a roommate and it’s too adorable to pass up.”

“Wait, I thought she was engaged to some hedge-fund guy.”

“No, another broken engagement, would you believe it? Poor Pansy.”

“Oh, poor Pansy me! She’ll have another rich boyfriend in, like, two weeks from now.”

“It’s too bad, though.”

“Cassandra! You feel bad for
Pansy Chapin
?”

“Well, I always did like her. I remember how our junior year, she taught me all about these sex positions that
actually work
in the shower. Before I talked to Pansy, I could never get the hang of that.”

“Oh, please.”

“What I meant was, no offense, but it’s kind of too bad I’m living with you already. Pansy has great taste. And some amazing mid-century modern furniture from her grandmother. The last time I saw her, she gave me those really great hand-me-down pillows I have on my bed? The olive green satin ones? Remember? I’ve always just loved the way that olive green looks with pink…”

“Pansy Chapin, Pansy Chapin! I’m sick of the name. This is the girl who once told me that the only good reason to go to Bennington is to have something interesting to talk about at cocktail parties on Fifth Avenue later on.”

“So? And what
is
a good reason to go to Bennington? Damned if I know.”

Shower sex, Sylvie was thinking as she hung up the phone. When Cassandra said that, there had swept over her a memory of how this boy she had been in love with—was it Jasper or Angus or Bertram or Max?—once hoisted her tiny body in his arms and up against the wall of the shower in order to make love to her. The water pressure in Sylvie’s bathroom was weak but the light celestial. Even now, so many years later, she could still recall the lavender-honey softness of that light, not to mention the feel of her silky warm flesh in his arms.

Was this what Cassandra felt with Edward? she wondered. And then, suddenly, it occurred to Sylvie that she couldn’t bear to ask her; that she didn’t even want to know the answer.

It occurred to her that Cassandra was becoming more and more like a stranger to her these days, and that she didn’t even care.