.

he told her, ‘because I am going to tell you something from Indiana about getting in touch with your true feelings.’ He looked at her intently and asked, ‘Are you listening, because I am not going to repeat this.’ Kate nodded, and Elliot continued. ‘I got in touch with my true feelings by learning how to mask them very early in life. When you realize that your true feelings are most likely going to get the shit kicked out of you, you learn how to hide them for as long as you have to. You wait for a safe place to express them.’ He smiled and gave Kate’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Like I do with you and Brice. But I wouldn’t tell a kid to try and find a best friend and a lover here at Andrew Country Day.’

      ‘I hear you,’ Kate agreed, and thought of poor Brian again.

      ‘So, what are you doing before dinner? Feel like making the trip to Dean & Deluca with me first?’

      Kate noticed the time – she’d have to hurry now – and gathered up her backpack and cotton sweater. ‘No can do. I must run. I have a date.’

      ‘You’re meeting this early with Michael?’ Elliot asked, surprised. ‘You have a date with him before he’s coming to dinner with us?’

      ‘It’s not with Michael.’

      ‘You have another date with someone else before Michael? And I don’t know about it?’ Elliot’s voice rose with shock and offense. ‘How could that happen? On average we speak six point four times a day in person and two point nine times by phone. A date I don’t know everything about is a statistical improbability.’

      Kate rolled her eyes and decided to put him out of his misery. ‘It’s just a date with Bina. Barbie’s told her Jack is finally popping the question tonight – they’re going to Nobu because Jack wants to make it really special – and to help prepare her I’m taking her out for a manicure.’ She wriggled her fingers in the air. ‘They should look good for the ring,’ she said in an accent similar to Bina’s Brooklynese.

      ‘You’re kidding! And you didn’t tell me?’ Elliot asked.

      She shrugged, slipped on her jacket, shouldered her bag and started toward the door. ‘I guess not.’

      Elliot followed her to the school door. ‘The fabled Bina and the much-sought-after Jack. Together at last.’

      ‘Yep, wedding bells have broken up that old gang of mine,’ Kate said. ‘Bye-bye Bitches of Bushwick. It’s only Bunny and me left unmarried.’ She looked down at her Swatch, refusing to engage with the depression this thought gave her. ‘Gotta go.’

      ‘Where are you and Bina getting together?’ Elliot demanded.

      ‘In SoHo,’ Kate answered, as she pushed against the bar of the school safety door.

      ‘Oh, good. I’m going that way. Just let me pick up my stuff.’

      ‘Forget it,’ Kate told him sternly.

      ‘No. No. Wait for me!’ he begged. ‘We can take the subway together and I can finally meet Bina.’

      Kate tried to keep her face still. Elliot had waged a year’s-long campaign to meet her old Brooklyn gang. But Kate didn’t need it. In fact, as she’d made clear more times than she could count, she loathed the idea. She’d tried in the dozen years since she’d left home to erase most of the dark memories of her troubled background and though she was still close friends with Bina Horowitz and occasionally saw her other pals, she didn’t need Elliot’s jaundiced eye appraising them.

      Kate gave him a look. She disappeared out of the door, then called back, ‘You need to meet Bina like I need another unemployed boyfriend.’

      She thought she was safely away and down the steps of the school when she heard Elliot behind her. He had a madras hat on and was clutching his backpack with one hand while he ran in a crouch that was a cross between Groucho’s walk and a begging position. ‘Oh, come on,’ he pleaded. ‘It’s not fair.’

      ‘Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Just like so many things in life,’ Kate told him and kept on walking while he flapped at his other backpack strap.

      ‘How come I never get to meet any of your Brooklyn friends? They sound so fascinating,’ he demanded.

      Kate stopped in the schoolyard and turned back to Elliot. ‘Bina may be a lot of things, but fascinating is not one of them.’ The girl had been her best friend since third grade and was still, in some ways, the most dependable. Kate had spent every holiday and most summer vacations at Bina’s, partly because the Horowitz house was so clean and orderly and Bina’s mom was so kind, but mostly because it allowed Kate to avoid the empty apartment that was her home or, worse, her father who was too often drunk.

      If Kate had perhaps outgrown Bina, who’d dropped out of Brooklyn College and worked at her father’s chiropractic office, it didn’t stop her from loving her. It was just that they had different interests and none of Bina’s would appeal to Elliot or any other of her Manhattan friends.

      ‘Elliot,’ Kate said sternly, as they made their way down the street. ‘You know your interest in Bina is only idle curiosity.’

      ‘Come on,’ Elliot coaxed. ‘Let me come. Anyway, it’s a free country. The Constitution says so.’

      Kate snorted. ‘Like the US Constitution, I believe in the separation of church and state.’

      ‘No,’ retorted Elliot, ‘you believe in the separation of gay and straight.’

      ‘That’s not fair. I let you have dinner with Rita and me only a week ago.’ She wasn’t going to let him manipulate her with his politically correct blackmail. ‘You’re not meeting Bina because even though she’s my oldest friend, you have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with her.’

      ‘I like people I have nothing in common with,’ Elliot argued. ‘That’s why I like you and live with Brice.’

      ‘Don’t be greedy, you’re getting to meet Michael tonight,’ said Kate. ‘Isn’t that enough for two yentas like you and Brice?’

      ‘Yeah,’ said Elliot, giving in. ‘It will have to do.’

      Kate laughed and said, ‘Come on, I’m going to be late for my girly date. Let me give you some advice I gave Jennifer Whalen just a couple of hours ago. “Try to make your own friends dear.”’

      They were at the IRT subway entrance. She gave Elliot a big smile and then hugged him goodbye. He shrugged, admitting his defeat. As she descended into the shadow of the subway, Elliot shouted after her, ‘Don’t forget; dinner’s at eight!’

      ‘See ya there!’ she yelled back and ran to get the train.

       3

      Kate and Bina walked down Lafayette Street, gazing in the windows of the fashion boutiques and art galleries that lined the SoHo strip. Kate looked and felt at home in SoHo. She would have liked to live in the neighborhood, but it was far too pricey for a school psychologist’s salary. Her apartment was on the West Side, in Chelsea, but Kate could pass as a downtown hipster. Bina Horowitz, on the other hand, was still all Brooklyn: her dark hair too done, her clothes all ‘matchy-matchy’, as Barbie used to say back in high school. Short, a little dumpy, and wearing too much gold, the truth was that Bina stuck out like a sore thumb among the modelesque shoppers converging in one of the coolest sections of downtown Manhattan. That didn’t stop Kate from loving her friend dearly but she was grateful for all she herself had learned about style from Brice, college, Manhattan boutiques and her current New York friends. She’d left her Brooklyn look far behind, thank goodness.

      ‘My God, Katie, I don’t know how you live here,’ Bina said. ‘These people in Manhattan are the reason girls all over the country go anorexic.’ Kate just laughed, though Bina was far from wrong. Bina continued to crane her head around at every opportunity, slowing