Rich and Pretty(31)

How did they find the time, she wonders? Two-hour phone calls with Lauren: When were they even apart for two hours, and what did they talk about? One of her stronger memories of childhood: the hot plastic of the telephone receiver pressed up against her ear.

She’s still a telephone person, though she can’t now concentrate on both a telephone call and some other task, as she had as a girl. She used to do her homework that way. The ubiquity of telephones hasn’t done anything to change the fundamental intimacy of a telephone call. A little miracle, is what it is. She pushes the résumés away, calls Lauren.

“Hi.” Lauren, familiar.

Another lost aspect of the old telephone culture: never knowing who was calling. “Hi.” Sarah’s surprised Lauren picked up. She’s usually harder to get.

“I was just thinking about you. That’s so weird. But so perfect.”

“Good things, I hope.”

“The greatest, actually. Do you remember our Goth phase? Please tell me you remember our Goth phase.”

“That hardly qualifies as a phase,” Sarah says. “We bought some Urban Decay and went to a Nick Cave show.”

“We were so dark and mysterious.” Lauren laughs.

Sarah shrugs, forgetting Lauren can’t see it. “Adolescence is a dark time. We were experimenting.”

“It’s funny to think about. It was unlike us. It was unlike you. You were . . .” Lauren trails off.

“I was . . . ?” Sarah asks.

“You were, you know, you were the alpha. The leader. The role model, the head of the class, the girl most likely.”

“Bullshit.” Sarah’s laughing. “I was not. I was just some girl. Just a teenage girl trying things on, like you were.”

“So what’s up?”

“Nothing up.” Sarah stands. Pacing has supplanted homework as what she does when she’s on the telephone. “I felt like calling. Do you remember how much we talked on the telephone when we were kids?”

“My parents hated that.”

“I remember you insisting that they get call waiting.”

“They refused. Eight dollars a month! An outrage.”

“But what did we talk about, Lauren? What was it that we had to say to each other, so urgently?” Sarah stares out at the snowy night. Snow makes you feel more cozy, always, and she doesn’t even care about having to go out into the stuff tomorrow. The tickets are bought, the rooms reserved: four nights, a pool, a hot tub, a spa, room service, a bar, golf, if for some reason she decides to take up golf. Having this to look forward to makes everything else seem possible.

Lauren sighs, or exhales, it’s not clear, the weight of her breath surprisingly loud. “I’m glad we don’t know. I’m sure it was idiotic. Did you ever read anything you wrote in a journal as a kid? It’s all garbage. Thank God I never had the discipline to write in my journal more than three times a year.”

Sarah was the same way. A journal as a birthday gift, two or three dutiful entries, then the book sat fallow in an old shoebox in her closet where she kept secret possessions: notes from friends, old boarding passes, playbills, useless foreign currency. That box must still be there in the house on East Thirty-Sixth Street. “I don’t know,” she says. “Whatever we were worried about then, it’s probably so sweet and unimportant.”

“It probably didn’t seem that way at the time, though,” Lauren says. “We wore black nail polish. We had real problems. The problems we have now pale in comparison.”

“You have problems?”

“I have no problems. How about you?”

“Wedding planning problems. Boring problems.”

“What’s the latest? Lulu been practicing her repertoire for you? She should do something with a mariachi band. Mariachi bands are so festive.”

“That’s cute, actually. No, the music is up to her. I just need to show up and get dressed. That’s the problem. The dress.”

“The dress, yeah. Have you been trying stuff on?”

“It’s all terrible, Lolo. Giant and puffy or like . . . slutty. I had no idea slutty was such a big thing in wedding dresses.”

“I think you should go slutty. I think it would be a real departure for you.”

“This is just one of those things. You can’t go in alone. I think I know what I want then I step inside and I turn into a babbling idiot and start trying on the most ridiculous things and I look at the salesgirl and she’s like ‘You look great!’ and I think maybe I do look great and should just give her four thousand dollars so I can be done with this torture.”

“The problem is you’re going in alone. Why don’t you take me? I’m rational.”

“Why don’t I take you?”

“I am the matron of honor,” Lauren says proudly.

“Maid.”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I got married. Sorry! I should have mentioned it. I just really wanted that matron.”

“If you want to come, please come, that would be so great. I could use the help,” she says.

“Why don’t you just ask? Yes, I will come. Duh. Don’t be a moron.”

“Talk to me about something besides this wedding.” Sarah’s eye falls on the stack of bridal magazines on the coffee table, several pages dog-eared for reasons she can’t recall. It just felt like what she should be doing—folding down pages and mentally filing away: mason jars for cocktails, Polaroid cameras left with the centerpieces, a basket of flip-flops by the dance floor. “What happened with temp?”