Jean easily spent more time at Angie’s parents’ apartment than she ever did on campus. The women had met at the Manhattan college Jean graduated from six months early and Angie not at all. Anyway, it was Jean who might have had cause to envy the close-knit self-sufficiency Angie’s parents had modeled for her, were she not so impervious to wanting what other people had. When Angie expressed this sentiment, Jean would point out that despite the proximity, her friend hardly saw her parents. Angie often thought she might have turned out better if her parents had been less involved in her life, or if there were several states between them, rather than just a few walls. Angie grew up with plenty of money, Jean did not-though not quite poor either, in a suburb of Pittsburgh with two brothers, parents apolitical, tolerant, then separated and largely absent, the father out in San Diego, mom remarried to a gregarious, yelling man. They were roommates, but spent many days, like this one, at Angie’s parents’ amply chambered burrow on the Upper West Side, where she had her own wing, like a rock star in a hospital: bed, bath, and a little someplace extra for the well-wishes to accumulate (Jean slept here). Angie rolled her eyes and picked at her lip. “I thought we were having a serious conversation!” cried Jean. Her companion looked as if she were made of gold and worshiping herself, the way she slipped her hands up and down her arms in a perfect, hungry rhythm. Jean insisted between tangents of laughter that she didn’t find it the least bit funny and privately wondered why Angie always wore such itchy sweaters when she was prone to worry raw every sensitivity imaginable. Angie said through convoluted gasps brought on by racing Adderall thoughts that Saint died at his desk so Jean could get his job.
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