schizophrenia or the whole new field of psychopharmacology opening up, but after a while my friend finally turned cold when it turned out that Estelle hadnât read Giovanniâs Room.
âRead?â Estelle laughed. âWhy should I bother with such foolishness?â
âYou donât read?â Shelly gasped.
âCertainly not,â Estelle replied, peeling a grape in her chaise with her long Lincoln Continental Maroon polished fingernails.
âBut books areââ Shelly cried, terror impaling her face into Hellenistic horror rather than classical Greek peaceful beauty like Estelleâs. ââbooks are necessary!â
âNecessary? What on earth for?â
âYou have to read,â Shelly cried, her face stolid as a sleeping boa, âor you canât learn things.â
âWhy should I be expected to do anything. Learn things? Read? I think itâs very silly of you young people these days to expect peopleâmeâto do anything. Very silly. And I must say,â she must have had to add, âvery boring and very tiresome of youâthose your age I meanâdoing all that. Doing anything is really so bad, but youâyour generationâyou do everything. It must stop.â
âI donât believe you,â Shelly now laughed, relieved.
âBut itâs true,â Estelle said, her thumb impaled in a grape which was blacker than her nail polish, thank heavens. If it were green, Shelly might have never gotten out alive. âAll of you doing what youâll do. Not only is it silly, boring, and tiresomeâitâs dangerous, of course, itâs bad and dangerous because you donât know what youâre doing. But dangerous, bad . . . these things are details. Details give women wrinkles. Iâm over fifty and I donât have one line on my face. Details! Like good and bad!â
âYouâre so funny,â Shelly decided, consoled that this niceold lady was only trying to be wicked and witty but didnât know how.
âNo Iâm not,â Estelle replied. Her face settled into a hitmanâs closed mask. Not a wrinkle anywhere.
âIf I donât go to UCLA I might come up to Berkeley this fall. Iâll call you, okay? And come over like this to see you again. . . . I like the older generation you know?â
âHow on earth can a grown woman spend the fall in a place like Berkeley?â Estelle demanded of me.
âSchool,â I said. âYou know, UC Berkeley? School?â
âOh, but all fall?â Estelle asked.
âOh Iâm going to be a lawyer one day,â Shelly smiled. âAnd help those more unfortunate than myself.â
âAnd who might that be?â Estelle asked.
âWhy the poor,â Shelly said, dripping brimfuls of her usual Gamma good intentionsâthe only sorority at Hollywood High that never got laid. âWeâve got to help.â Shelly went on, âI mean, weâve got to do something.â
âDarling,â Estelle turned to me and said, âIâm terribly sorry but itâs just too much trouble for me to get up. And show you out. Can you show yourselves out?â
âShelly, weâre going,â I told her.
âNow?â She was in the middle of her first sip of tea and her first cookie.
âNow!â I said. âHurry up.â
âThatâs a good girl,â Estelle called out to me as I left, âand slam the door tight, sweetheart. Lock it!â
· · ·
Fortunately Lola and Estelle formed a friendship originally based on the obvious premise that mascaraâMaybel-line black cake mascara you spit into and brushed onto your eyelashes with a caked little brush which fit into the very same little red containerâthat mascara was the meaning of life. Since they were really the only two in Teretskyâs troupe who understood this simple reality, their