Rich Friends Read Online Free PDF

night or turning to a wall as death overtook them: Beverly was reminded of the manner her family had practiced Judaism, furtively eating a large meal from the good Lenox on the High Holy Days.
    A lean priest rustled up the center aisle. He was looking at her curiously. Or so she imagined. All at once her mouth tasted bad, metallic, as if she’d been sucking a penny.
    What am I doing in a church ?
    I don’t belong here .
    Pushing to her feet, she fled, racing through hot streets. By the time she reached Mrs. Linde’s Hudson sweat rolled from her and she was gasping in terrible heaves.
    That night she phoned Lloyd. In a breathy, embarrassed murmur, she told him she couldn’t, uhh, keep seeing him, at least not every Saturday night.
    At the end of August she came down with mumps which worsened to mumps meningitis. Four long white boxes of American Beauties arrived with cards from Lloyd.
    She had fully recuperated on the afternoon that Mrs. Linde came into her room with a letter. “Dear, Aunt Pauline would like for you to come to New York.” She handed Beverly the folded sheet. “How nice of her,” Beverly said. “Daddy and I think it would be good for you.” There was an unspoken corollary to Mrs. Linde’s remark: to get away from Catholic boys who send red roses. More than anything, Beverly wished she could talk out her bewilderment with her mother. It was impossible. The Lindes were oblique people. They had bought this brick house in Glendale, which was not then (and is still not) a suburb of liberalism. The particular section they had chosen had no other Jewish families, yet they had proceeded to act with their daughter as if she were no different from their neighbors. (In school, with honest cruelty, the children had made Beverly aware of these differences.) Later, the Lindes did admit one minor peculiarity, like having an extra molar. We marry only those with one too many teeth. Beverly had accepted her parents’ paradoxes. Now her eyes blurred. Weepy. She was undone by their concern. She wanted to reassure her mother that she didn’t love Lloyd. This, however, was a time and place of reticence, and Mrs. Linde—to the end of her days—considered discussion of one’s emotional landscape a breach of propriety. So Beverly said, “Thank you, Mother,” and hugged Mrs. Linde. Unyielding all-in-one corset. “You’re such a funny, sensitive child,” Mrs. Linde said, extricating herself. “We decided since you can’t be in school this semester, it’s a perfect opportunity for you to see New York.”
    2
    â€œMy father,” Dan said, “thinks I’m getting too involved.”
    New York. Beverly had been taken by Dan Grossblatt for Sunday brunch at Steinberg’s and Dan had ordered for both of them. Lox, cream cheese, and bagels. Cream cheese, of course, she knew. Lox she recognized as smoked salmon, but she’d never been exposed to a bagel. When she’d asked what it was, Dan, laughing, had assumed she was putting him on. Now, biting into the tough bun, she stared at him. Cream cheese squished out with a bit of salmon. She bent to let them fall, unobtrusively as possible, onto her plate.
    Finishing chewing, she asked, “Involved?”
    He reached for her pickled tomato. “If you didn’t want it, why order?”
    â€œYou ordered.”
    They smiled at one another. A bald waiter passed, his tray leaking odors of rich brown butter.
    â€œHow’d he know you are? Involved?” Asking, she realized her stupidity. Dan lived at home, someplace in New Rochelle, and since they’d met sixteen days earlier, he’d taken her out every night.
    â€œYou had to start the phoning.” Dan grinned. He was the one who called. Two or three times a day, at odd hours. Friday morning, though, at the Museum of Modern Art she’d been transfixed, overwhelmed by Monet’s Waterlilies and knowing she must