Bennington Girls Are Easy by Charlotte Silver Read Free Book Online Page A

the role of accomplice in a series of darker and darker intrigues for the remainder of the school year.
    That Saturday, the three young women spent a harmonious afternoon strolling around downtown, stopping to buy five-dollar pashminas from a street vendor in SoHo. Cassandra bought one in lavender and Sylvie bought one in cream right away. But Gala couldn’t make up her mind. Did she want gold? Or red? Or how about this turquoise one? The only word for Gala Gubelman’s style of beauty was
ripe
; even her head of chestnut hair seemed to suggest the promise of fertility. On top of this, she heightened, rather than downplayed, her lavish physical good fortune by always dressing in bright colors; Gala was the sort of woman who would not buy a pair of black tights if a pair of kelly green ones could be had instead.
    “The turquoise looks cheap,” weighed in Sylvie.
    “No,” said Cassandra, “it could be almost Indian…”
    “Indian? Since when do you like things that are Indian?”
    “Indian culture can provide some really elegant visual inspiration sometimes. If you don’t overdo it.”
    “Yeah, but I hate all of that cheesy beading they do.”
    “I’d get red if I were you,” said Cassandra, who, being a blonde, had always believed that the color red belonged to brunettes.
    “But I just don’t know,” cooed Gala, who could make the most mundane of sentences come out sexy. She even had a dainty, provoking little lisp. Then, as if the sound of her own voice had reminded her of her own goddesslike power in the world where men were concerned, she turned to the nearest one she could find. It was the pashmina vendor, who had been getting impatient with the windy deliberations of these young women mussing up his merchandise.
    “You,” said Gala, her plump lips curving into a honeyed, deadly smile. “Which color would
you
get if you were me?” She cocked her head, cradling the soft fabrics to her throat.
    He pointed to the gold one and that settled it. Gala bought the gold pashmina.
    Afterward the girls burst out laughing and Sylvie chided her: “Gala! You needed to ask the pashmina vendor for color advice?”
    “When we were standing right there,” said Cassandra.
    “And you had to ask, like, this random Haitian dude for his opinion. I was an art history major!”
    “We have great taste!” added Cassandra.
    Gala shrugged.
    “You
are
boy crazy, Gala. This just goes to prove it.”
    “Boy crazy? Boy crazy? Actually, in case you’ve blocked out our Bennington days, I’m a complete and total slut!”
    They all laughed, remembering.
    Sylvie said: “Hey, we were trying to remember something the other day. Did you ever have a threesome with Pansy Chapin?”
    “Oh, no. You must be thinking of me and Bitsy Citron.”
    “Oh, yeah, people always used to get Pansy and Bitsy mixed up,” said Sylvie. “Same physical type. But Bitsy had that little white dog named Brioche, remember? She used to bring him with her to Coffee Hour.”
    “Is Bitsy a native New Yorker?” Cassandra wanted to know.
    “Oh, yeah. She and Ludo grew up on Park Avenue, remember?” Sylvie had since stopped sleeping with Ludo and was no longer working for him, but considered herself to still be an authority on the Citron family nevertheless. “This one time the whole family got tied up
for ransom.
The guy who did it was wearing a ski mask and everything He must have had some interest in their diamond mines They never did catch him, I don’t think. But, moving on. Is Pansy an heiress to anything? She certainly
looks
like one.”
    “No,” answered Cassandra promptly. “Old money. Bar Harbor. You get the picture. It ran out.”
    “Oh. Well, anyway. Bitsy Citron and I had a threesome with that Bulgarian sculptor guy, what was his name, the guy who used to wear those really skinny purple velvet pants.”
    “Oh yeah, that character. What
was
his name?”
    “Does it matter? To tell you the truth, the only damn thing I can remember about him