JENNIFER CLOSE - Girls in White Dresses

Once, in col ege, El en kissed a guy who lived down the hal from them. They cal ed him the Wildebeest because he was portly with wild curly hair and he snorted when he laughed. He was the guy who got drunk at parties, stripped naked, and did the worm on the floor in a pool of keg beer.

They al knew him. They al liked him wel enough. And they were al shocked when El en announced that she’d kissed him the night before when he’d walked her to her door.

“Hold on,” Isabel a said. “Please back up. You made out with the Wildebeest?”

El en shrugged. “I didn’t plan it,” she said. “He offered to walk me home and he’s so funny.”

“Of course he’s funny,” Lauren said. “He’s a Wildebeest. Wildebeests are supposed to be funny. But Wildebeests are not for making out with.”

El en was unashamed. She just smiled and shrugged and went back to her room. Al the girls stared at each other and shook their heads.

“Making out with a Wildebeest,” they whispered to one another. “What wil be next?”

For the most part, El en’s boys were harmless. That’s not to say that they al had sparkling personalities or quick wit to make up for their appearance. No, some of them were truly blessed with nothing. But stil , the girls never real y objected to El en’s choices. “Different strokes for different folks,” their friend Mary always said whenever El en brought home another one. And they al laughed and let her be. “What harm could it do?” they asked each other. And so they let El en have her ugly little fun.

But then she met Louis. And Louis was awful.

Louis weighed about ninety pounds, had soft, wispy blond hair, and wore the same pair of rust-colored corduroys their entire junior year. He was pretentious and social y awkward and El en was crazy about him. Louis sat in their apartment and chain-smoked cigarettes while he ignored al of them. Once, when Lauren asked El en for an opinion on which shirt she should wear out that night, Louis weighed in. “It can be dangerous to care too much about clothes. It makes you shal ow,” he said. Then he reached into his pants pocket, took out a paperback copy of Why I Am So Wise by Nietzsche, and started reading.

“I hate that guy,” Lauren said later that night. “He’s such a dick.”

“Relax,” Isabel a said. “It won’t last. They never do.”

The first time Louis dumped El en, they silently cheered. But a week later, the couple was back together, and Louis showed up again in their apartment, smoking cigarettes and making comments about how sil y girls were in general. Louis broke up with El en over and over again, and she kept going back to him. None of them understood it.

“He looks like Ichabod Crane,” Lauren said once. “I mean, what I think Ichabod Crane would look like if he wore the same pants for a year, you know?”

“I just don’t understand when he has time to wash those pants,” Mary said. “He wears them every day. That’s just so gross.” They al agreed.

After graduation, Louis broke up with El en again. He told her that he couldn’t be tied down, that he was going to travel through Europe alone and needed his freedom. “Please let this one stick,” they said to one another. Sure, El en was devastated now, but she’d meet someone else, someone who would make her happier. They were sure of that. It was al for the best.

They al spent a year after graduation living with their parents in their respective suburbs, saving money and looking for jobs. It was miserable, sleeping in twin beds in their childhood rooms, sending out mil ions of résumés, and trying not to get annoyed when their parents said things like

“What time wil you be home?” and “No drinks upstairs.”

Lauren, El en, and their friend Shannon al moved to Chicago that summer. El en had gotten a job offer in Boston but had turned it down, claiming that she had always wanted to live in Chicago. “It’s such a fun city,” she said. “The lake is so great.” Lauren and Shannon rol ed their eyes at each other. They knew she was lying about the lake. Louis was from Chicago and El en was just hoping he’d come back there soon. It was sad, real y.

Even a little pathetic, they thought.

But they didn’t real y care that much. One year after graduating, they were final y on their own. They rented an apartment on Armitage with two and a half bedrooms, one tiny bathroom, no air-conditioning, and a giant deck. It was almost like col ege, except they had to get up and go to work every morning.

It was so hot that summer that no one could stay inside. They tried (for the sake of being grown-ups) not to go out every night. They sat on the deck in ponytails and shorts, reading magazines and painting their nails, trying to imagine a breeze from Lake Michigan. Eventual y, someone would suggest having a beer or a glass of wine. They’d sit awhile, and someone would suggest going to the bar below them, just for one drink, just to sit in air-conditioning for a while. And before they knew it, it was two in the morning and they were listening to Karen, the crazy bartender with missing teeth at Shoes Pub, tel them about Craig, the asshole who broke her heart.

Lauren blamed the weather for a lot of what happened that summer. It drove them out of their apartment, to bars and street fairs and concerts. It made them restless and irritable while they waited for something to start. They al knew they ought to feel different in their new lives, but they felt the same and it put them on edge. Hot and impatient, they fidgeted in the heat, grumbling and asking each other, “What next? What next?”

El en was at a loss without Louis. She hadn’t so much as flirted with an ugly boy since he’d left for Europe. He sent her postcards from Paris and Florence that said things like Be yourself or be nothing and Live humbly but live true .

Lauren and Shannon snatched these cards from the pile to read them before El en did. It was one of their greatest sources of entertainment.

“Live humbly?” Shannon said. “Uh, yeah. I’m pretty sure his parents are paying for his humble trip around Europe.”

They always put the cards back in the mail so that El en could take them to her room and read them over and over again. They knew she was pining over him in there.

“We’ve got to get her over this,” Lauren said. So they dragged her to bars and scouted for unattractive men. A few times she even met some homely boys, let them buy her a drink, and talked to them for a while. But when the girls got close, they heard what El en was saying to these guys.

“He real y broke my heart,” she’d say. “I just real y miss him.”

“What can we do?” they asked each other. They shook their heads in disappointment. Why couldn’t she just let it go?

They al got tickets to a concert at the old steel factory down the street, to see a young, handsome singer who wrote tortured love songs and whined about the troubles of being twenty-five. Their friend Isabel a was visiting from New York, and she came over before the concert to drink beers on the porch, but al she did was wander around and say, “This place is huge. Your apartment is huge.”

“Yeah, we like it,” Lauren said.

“No,” Isabel a said. “You have no idea. You should see my apartment in New York. It’s teeny. And expensive. This place is a mansion.”

“Then move here,” Lauren told her. “Move to Chicago!” Isabel a just smiled and continued to look around in wonder.