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“No.” Her nose wrinkles. “What makes you say that?”
“You seem so close, is all.”
“We’re friends.” She pauses, looks around again, and seeing that Ryan is still engaged with Maggie and Capote is talking to the strange skinny girl, decides I’m her only option for conversation. “I would never go out with him. I think any girl who dates him is insane.”
“Why?” I take a gulp of my drink.
“She’ll have her heart broken.”
Well. I take another gulp of my drink, and add a little more vodka and ice. I don’t feel particularly drunk. In fact, I feel disturbingly sober. And resentful. Of everyone else’s life.
I join Maggie and Ryan on the couch. “What are you guys talking about?”
“You,” Ryan says. This is a person who cannot lie.
Maggie blushes. “Ryan!” she scolds.
“What?” he asks, looking from Maggie to me. “I thought you guys were best friends. Don’t best friends tell each other everything?”
“You know nothing about women,” Maggie giggles.
“At least I try. Unlike most men.”
“What about me?” I ask.
“Maggie was telling me about you and Bernard.” There’s a note of admiration in Ryan’s voice. Bernard Singer is obviously some kind of hero to both him and Capote. He?
?s exactly what they’d like to be someday. And apparently my association with him elevates my status. But I knew that, didn’t I?
“Maggie doesn’t like him. She says he’s too old.”
“I didn’t say that. I said he wasn’t right for you.”
“No man is ever too old,” Ryan says, half jokingly. “If Carrie can go out with a guy fifteen years older, it means there’s hope for me when I’m in my thirties.”
Maggie’s face twists in distaste. “You really want to date someone who’s seventeen when you’re thirty?”
“Maybe not seventeen.” Ryan winks. “I’d prefer it if she were legal.”
Maggie titters. Ryan’s looks and charm seem to have overcome his stupidity about women.
“Anyway, who’s seventeen?” he asks.
“Carrie,” Maggie says accusingly.
“I’ll be eighteen in a month.” I glare at her. Why is she doing this to me?
“Does Bernard know you’re seventeen?” Ryan asks with too much interest.
“No,” Maggie says. “She told me to lie and say she was nineteen.”
“Aha. The old lying-up trick,” Ryan teases.
The apartment buzzer goes off again. “Reinforcements,” Ryan announces as Maggie laughs. Five more people arrive—three scruffy guys and two very serious young women.
“Let’s go,” I say to Maggie.
Ryan looks at me in surprise. “You can’t go,” he insists. “The party’s just getting started.”
