Cheating at Solitaire(13)

“Sometimes I think it’s entirely understandable that your grandmother approved of you. Even after you dropped out of high school.”

“Education is for swots,” Kendra said. “And even the most successful swots don’t bother with it. Although I’ve noticed something about success. It comes and goes. I wonder if it always did that.”

Kendra’s mother’s name was Maverick, which was only one of the things Kendra’s grandmother had had against her. By now, she had put down her copy of Vanity Fair and was openly staring. Kendra was used to that. Everybody stared at her. Her family had been staring at her since she was in the seventh grade. Kendra stared at herself very hard, trying to look directly into her own eyes, as if by doing that she could see into something that was otherwise always hidden. It never worked. She knew herself well enough to know that everything she was was available on the surface. The mystery people thought they saw in her was actually disbelief. Nobody took her seriously.

“I don’t understand your relationships with your friends,” Maverick said, finally. “That girl who called, what’s her name, she’s a friend of yours.”

“Which girl who called?”

“The second one.”

“Marcey? She used to be a friend. I don’t think she’s going to be a friend very much longer. She’s going to hell.”

“Yes, I know. I can see that. You drop your friends when they go to hell?”

Kendra bit her lip. “They’re not friends like that. They’re more like business acquaintances. Do you know what people pay me to come to their parties?”

“To come to their parties? That’s it? Not to, oh, I don’t know, promote a product, publicize a clothing line—”

“Just to come to their parties,” Kendra said. “Even private parties. They pay me a million dollars. This year, I made almost as much money on my own as I get from the trust fund, and next year I’ll make more. That’s because I’m the center. I define what it means to be one of the hot people. I can’t afford to have Marcey Mandret throwing up on my shoes. Besides, it wasn’t actually her who called.”

“Claudine said—”

“She said it was about Marcey, not from her. It was from Stewart Gordon. God, I hate that man. I really hate him. He’s so—”

“Intelligent?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s true, though, you hate intelligent people.”

“It’s not true at all. I find smart people fascinating.”

“There’s a big difference between intelligent and smart.”

“Mostly what he is is impossible,” Kendra said. “They hate him too, you know, Marcey and Arrow. There he is every day, telling them how to live their lives, lecturing them when they’re just a minute late for a rehearsal or they have trouble memorizing their lines or something. He’s impossible. I didn’t invite him to the party. I didn’t want him around to bring everybody down.”

“But you did invite him to the party,” Maverick said. “I saw the invitation list. What did he do, turn you down?”

“Nobody turns me down.”

“Maybe he’s even more intelligent than I thought he was.”

Kendra ignored this. She did not think Stewart Gordon was “intelligent,” and she didn’t really “hate” him in the way she usually used that word. He made her uneasy, that was all. She couldn’t be around him without starting to squirm, and she didn’t know why. She did know she didn’t like it. For most of her life, with most people, that would have been enough—except that she’d never had this kind of feeling about anybody else that she could remember. Teachers in school, clergymen at the various churches Maverick had dragged them all through when she was having her spiritual phase, even the bankers and trust lawyers who handled her money, Kendra could take any and all of them in stride. They only thought they knew more than she did. Stewart Gordon just made her want to spit.

“Marcey got drunk in that place downtown and threw up on the bar,” she said. “That’s the message he left with Clau-dine. I don’t know why he left it with me. I don’t know what he thinks I’m supposed to do about it.”

“You could take her in. Dry her off. Make sure she didn’t freeze to death in the cold.”

“She won’t freeze to death. She’ll show up here right on time, just watch. And she’ll be sobered up enough to get drunk all over again. So will Arrow. I just wish we didn’t have to put up with the dopey boyfriend.”