Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [62]
“You’re sleeping with a sexagenarian for money!”
“He prefers sexygenarian!”
My mouth went sour with pregurgitive spit.
And then, as is her custom, Dexy broke into ear-shattering song. “‘Money makes the world go round, of that we can be sure…’” She blew a Bronx cheer. “‘Pfffffft! On being poor!’”
I covered my ears to protect both my hearing and my sanity.
“And it’s not just the money,” she said. “It’s also the apartment….”
So there you have it: Someone I consider a friend doesn’t need to go back to school because her living expenses are covered by a Viagra-popping geezer. While Dexy’s drama was kind of vicariously amusing in college, her post–bipolar breakdown behavior is scaring me. And yet I stay friends with her, in part because I feel obligated to serve as a normalizing if totally ineffectual influence in her life. I already regret inviting her to Thursday night’s Care. Okay? karaoke party thrown by…
4. Cinthia Wallace (too many private schools to list here; GED ’02, Harvard ’06)
Cinthia, aka Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace or Hy, is too busy being the most famous face behind the hipster philanthropic organization called the Social Activists, which has taken the old-money fund-raising model (i.e., black-tie balls, silent auctions) and given it an A-list new-money twist (i.e., stripping for charity, poker tournaments). This doesn’t require an advanced degree, just a grand inheritance from a father she commonly referred to as “that jagoff.”
I sound like one of the haters. Cinthia is routinely mocked for her charitable efforts—you know, trying to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, and cure the sick, one celebrity-studded Care. Okay? karaoke party at a time. In her defense, she could’ve started a line of “aspirational handbags” or opened a “lifestyle boutique” that sells denim for a grand and plastic rings for a nickel. She could have decided to what-the-fuck? it, drugging and whoring her way back to her roots and re-creating her reign as the underage ur-Hilton of her day. But she didn’t. And that’s admirable. Of course, if I had a fifty-million-dollar inheritance, I could do something pretty damn admirable, too.
But alas, I don’t have fifty million. I have negative sixty-five thousand dollars.
And I not only long for the higher degree that I will never have, but the final semester that never was. Keep in mind that I actually piled on the credits and graduated one semester early to minimize my loans by another fifteen thousand dollars or so. This is unheard of in an age when the typical student completes four years in five and a half. (My sister was part of that vanguard.) Seriously, it was wise of you to choose a school that has altogether eliminated student loans in favor of grants and work study. Perhaps that’s one advantage of entering college at twenty-three instead of eighteen. You will never know how it feels to owe various lenders approximately sixty-five thousand dollars for your Ivy League diploma, or what it’s like to pay them off in increasingly expensive installments for the next 360 months of your life. One doesn’t have to be a multimillionaire, but it’s a lot easier to be an idealist when you aren’t so deeply entrenched in a hellhole of debt. Because no matter how I consolidate or reconsolidate my loans, I feel like I’m digging out the entire New York City subway system with my Phi Beta Kappa pin.
What I envy most about you and everyone else heading back to school is the certainty of it all. You’ve got a prescribed set of requirements to guide you through the next few years. Focus your energy on the completion of those assignments and you will succeed. Guaranteed. Where’s my syllabus to guide me through life?
But there is hope in the air. Early September is the season for fresh starts, complete with turning-a-new-leaf metaphors and all that. And I’ve got my most promising job interview in months. I’m wearing a featherweight cashmere shell, an impeccably tailored gabardine pencil skirt, and the most sumptuous boots that have ever graced my