Rich Friends Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t hold hands, not if mothers were likely to see from a window, not unless the couple were engaged—or at the very least, pinned. Beverly and Lloyd, both, had been raised to this fine distinction. She jerked back her hand. Lloyd’s face glowed with naked hurt. And the world of lavender blossoms and fernlike leaves rushed around Beverly. She never had taken pleasure in conquests. She could not, like Caroline, inflict the teasing ambiguities of flirtation. She could not bear the thought of causing minor humiliation in anyone, much less Lloyd. He gave a muted, nervous cough. Here, Caroline would have laughed and made rapport. Beverly could not trust herself to speak. Charcoal snapped in her fist.
    After a while Lloyd spoke. “See the way the sun comes through the branches?”
    â€œI was trying to get that on paper.”
    â€œWhen I was little,” he said, “there was this stained-glass window in church. All colors of pink and red, and sometimes the light would slant like this. I figured it was a ramp to Jesus and his angels.”
    Beverly could scarcely breathe.
    Next Wednesday morning, early, she drove to USC, filling out her next semester’s schedule. Afterward, she didn’t get back in Mrs. Linde’s Hudson. She walked north, past the statue of Tommy Trojan on his horse. Hot already, waves shimmered off the streets around campus. After a while she came to a large Catholic church. St. Mary’s. Covering her soft brown hair with a scarf that she didn’t tie—it was too hot—she entered. The church was empty, smelled of incense, wax, and peace. Knotting the silk, she sank into the last pew. An old Mexican woman limped in, pausing to genuflect before kneeling at the leather rail in front of the altar. Beads clicked. Sibilant whispers.
    Beverly gazed up at the cross.
    Lloyd, she thought, Lloyd. I’m here to think about him. In most girls it would be histrionic, coming to an alien church to contemplate a boyfriend, but Beverly had not chosen her ground with drama in mind. For all her self-consciousness about being Jewish, in every other matter she lived on the naked point of innocence. She acted instinctively, without artifice or hypocrisy or malice. She was here for one reason: the place seemed right to sort out emotions about a Catholic.
    First, she thought, the necking. It’s fine. But … She was passionate, and with two of her high school boyfriends she had ached to go the limit. With Lloyd, though, she never had felt any substantial urges. We both enjoy classical music. And Lloyd, thank God, would rather take in a picture show than a beer bust. He never makes derogatory cracks about any group. (This was vitally important to Beverly, who had spent the better part of her childhood playing deaf to such cracks.) When he plays his oboe his brow gets all crinkled.
    And as usual when she tried to think to a concise end, her mind wandered. Without realizing, she leaned forward, resting her arms on the next pew. The position was awkward. She inched forward, resting her weight on her knees. The same position as the Mexican woman. How strange, Beverly thought. The old woman’s praying.
    â€œI want to pray,” she whispered.
    Pray?
    The Lindes didn’t belong to a temple. Ritually they celebrated Christmas with an Open House, and shared their Thanksgiving turkey with the Harleys, who were English—Thad Harley was Howard Linde’s partner in the accounting firm of Harley and Linde. Other holidays, the Jewish ones, were observed by Mr. and Mrs. Linde and Beverly, alone, gulping a festive dinner with a general air of embarrassment because Willeen, the colored daily maid, was serving them. Years later, Beverly read of the marranos , those Jews forcibly converted by the Inquisition, who lived exactly as their neighbors, yet for generations held on to one particular aspect of the faith of their fathers, sometimes merely changing body linen for Friday