Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [4]
“Hey, Lenny, it’s me. Were you sleeping?”
Damn. “No. Just …” Lena heard an ambulance and a lot of honking through the phone. “Where are you?”
“On Greenwich Ave. I just got a facial. I look scary.”
It was either Carmen or Effie; still too noisy to tell which. Lena held the phone between her shoulder and her ear and went back to flipping pages. “What are you doing tonight?”
Three of many words were intelligible: “theater” and “benefit” and “Jones.” It was Carmen.
“Great.” Lena couldn’t pick which of those words summoned the worst thing.
“Jones bought a table.”
Yes, she could pick. The worst was “Jones.”
“I would have invited you, but you wouldn’t have come.”
“That’s true.”
“And you are … staying home and watching a movie with Drew.”
“Yes.” Sometimes Carmen made it easy for her.
“That’s just sad.”
But never that easy.
“No, it’s not sad. It’s what I like to do. Anyway, we can’t all be rich and glamorous.”
“Len, I’m not demanding glamour. You’re just not allowed to be that boring.”
Lena laughed. “Hey, did you do the kissing scene yet with the renegade cop?”
“No, that’s Friday. He has terrible breath.” Carmen’s voice was swallowed by what Lena guessed was a bus plowing by.
“Can you come to New York next weekend?” Carmen’s voice was asking when it came back.
“So you and Effie can take turns biting at my flesh until I’m dead?”
“Oh, please. Len. It wasn’t that bad last time.”
“How about the drunk DA who asked if he could give me a sponge bath?”
“Okay. I promise I won’t drag you to any dinner parties or introduce you to any men this time.”
“Anyway, I can’t. I’m teaching Saturday morning and I’ve got a painting to finish.” Lena was genuinely looking forward to a quiet weekend in the studio.
“You haven’t been here since Labor Day. You used to come all the time. What happened?”
What happened? That was a good question. And it wasn’t just the slobbering DA to blame. She’d gone all the time when Bee, Carmen, and Tibby all lived in a pile on Avenue C. She had gone every weekend. But that was a long time ago—more than three and a half years ago. Before they’d lost the lease, before Tibby had moved in with Brian and subsequently moved to the other side of the world, before Bee had moved to California, before Carmen had gotten semi-famous and taken up with the infernal Jones. Before her little sister, Effie, had moved to New York in a blur of open bars, pedicures, and sample sales, chewing up Manhattan from one end to the other. New York felt different now.
“I won’t make you do anything,” Carmen promised. “You don’t have to buy, wear, or say anything. I can’t speak for Effie, star journalist, but I will leave you to wander around the Met for two days if that’s what you want. Anyway, Jones is gonna be out of town.”
That made it slightly more tempting.
“You’ll let me know,” Carmen said, stealing the words from her mouth.
Lena thought of something. “Hey, Carma?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Did Tibby text you about something coming in the mail?”
Carmen must have ducked into a store or a lobby, because it was suddenly quiet. “Yes. Weird, huh. You didn’t get anything yet, did you?”
“No.” Lena hadn’t checked her mail slot yet today. She made a note to do that, with some combination of excitement and speculative concern. They heard from Tibby little enough that they circulated the news quickly when they did.
“Nothing good ever comes in the mail,” Carmen opined.
Carmen was so attached to her iPhone she might have had it sewn into her skin if iSurgery were offered at the Apple store. She didn’t trust information that came any other way. But Lena liked the mail. She was talented at waiting.
Carmen’s phone started beeping. It always did that eventually. “My manager,” Carmen said. Her voice was once again immersed in street noise. “Talk to you. Love you.”
“Bye.”
Lena had less than ten minutes of peace before her phone rang again. This time it was her mother from the car. She could always tell that particular