Carolyne and Cici are best friends through the usual conduit of bonding female friendship in New York: Over some jerky guy.
Before she met Cici, Carolyne met Sam, forty-two, an investment banker. Carolyne kept running into him every time she went out. Sam had a girlfriend—a Swiss girl who was trying to get into broadcasting. One night, Sam and Carolyne saw each other at Spy and they were drunk, and they started making out. They ran into each other another night and went back to Sam's place and had sex. This happened a couple more times. Then his girlfriend got deported.
Nevertheless, the «relationship» continued along the same lines. Every time Carolyne and Sam ran into each other, they would have sex. One night, she saw him at System and gave him a hand job in the corner. Then they went outside and had sex behind a Dumpster in an alleyway. Afterward, Sam zipped up his pants, kissed her on the cheek, and said, "Well, thanks a lot. I'll see you later." Carolyne started throwing trash at him. "I'm not through with you, Samuel," she said.
A couple of weeks later, Cici was at Casa La Femme, when she saw two guys she knew. A third guy was with them. He was dark and he was wearing a thin, white, button-down shirt and khakis; Cici could tell that he had a great body. He seemed shy, and Cici began flirting with him. She'd just gotten her hair cut, and she kept bmshing her bangs out of her eyes and
looking up at him while sipping a glass of champagne. They were all going to some girl's birthday party at a loft in SoHo; they asked Cici to go with them. They walked. Cici kept giggling and bumping into the guy, and at one point he put his arm around her. "How old are you?" he asked.
"Twenty-four."
"Perfect age," he said.
"Perfect? For what?" Cici asked.
"Me," he said.
"How old are you?" Cici asked.
"Thirty-six," he said. Lying.
The party was crowded. Beer in a keg, vodka and gin in plastic glasses. Cici had just turned away from the bar and was about to take a sip of beer when she saw an apparition barreling toward her from the other side of the loft. A large girl with long dark hair, wearing red lipstick and, rather inexplicably, a long «dress» (If you can call it that, Cici thought) that appeared to be made of flowered chiffon scarves. Arabian Nights.
The guy turned just as she was about to run into them. "Carolyne!" he said. "Love your dress." "Thanks, Sam," Carolyne said.
"Is that that new designer you were telling me about?" Sam asked. "The one who was going to make you a bunch of dresses for free if you wrote about him?" He smirked.
"Would you shut up?" Carolyne screamed. She turned to Cici. "Who are you, and what are you doing at my birthday party?"
"He invited me," Cici said.
"So you just accept invitations from other girls' boyfriends, huh?"
"Carolyne. I am not your boyfriend," Sam said. "Oh yeah. You've just slept with me about twenty times. What about last time. That hand job at System?"
"You gave someone a hand job at a club?" Cici asked.
"Carolyne. I have a girlfriend," Sam said.
"She got deported. And now you can't keep your greedy little hands off me."
"She's back," Sam said. "She's living in my apartment."
"You have a girlfriend?" Cici asked.
"You mortify me," Carolyne said to Sam. "Get out and take your cheap little slut with you."
"You have a girlfriend?" Cici asked again. She kept repeating it, all the way down the stairs until they were out on the street.
Two weeks later, Carolyne ran into Cici in the bathroom at a club.
"I just wanted to tell you that I saw Sam," Carolyne said, applying red lipstick. "He got down on his hands and knees and begged me to go back to him. He said I was beyond."
"Beyond what?" Cici said, pretending to check her mascara in the mirror.
"Did you fool around with him?" Carolyne asked. She snapped the top back on her lipstick.
"No," Cici said. "I don't fool around with anybody."
Sure enough, Carolyne and Cici became best friends.