Bright Young Women(4)

Denise went determinedly to the small amber-bodied lamp the girls kept on top of a stack of old magazines, screwing off the shade and stretching the cord as far as it would go so she could crouch before the picture and scan its surface with the bare bulb, not unlike a beachgoer with a handheld metal detector. She shook her head in awe. “Even their composites from the forties were mounted with museum quality!” she cried with deeply felt outrage.

For two years, we’d allowed the guys of Turq House—short for the shade their shutters and doors were painted—to think they were partaking in the classic friendly theft that had been occurring between sweetheart sororities and fraternities for generations. What they didn’t know was that we’d been swapping out the high-quality glass from their composites for the acrylic plexiglass from ours before proffering the exchange. It was Denise who caught the discrepancy, back when we were sophomores.

This glass is gorgeous, she’d breathed, and the older girls had laughed, because Robert Redford was gorgeous, but glass? Little sophomore Denise had marched us down to our display wall and pointed out the differences—see how faded our composites had become? Turq House was using glass, expensive museum-grade glass that protected their photographs from damaging elements like the sun and dust mites. Denise was a fine art and modern languages double major—the former concentration had always been the plan, the latter added to the mix that past summer, after she read in the Tallahassee Democrat about the construction of a state-of-the-art Salvador Dalí museum down in St. Petersburg, Florida. Denise had immediately shifted to declare a double major in modern languages, concentration in Spanish, spending the summer after her twentieth birthday on campus, making up two years’ worth of credits. Dalí himself would be flying in to interview prospective staff, and Denise intended to dazzle him in his native language. Hardly surprising, but when they eventually met, he was completely taken with her, hiring her as an assistant gallerist to start the Monday after graduation.

“I doubt they’d even notice…” Sophomore Denise had trailed off, smart enough to know that as a pledge, she couldn’t be the one to propose it.

There were and continue to be plenty of disparities between fraternity and sorority living, but the big one that the chapter president at the time was always going on about was the level at which Greek alumni gave back to their organizations. Fraternity men had, for generations, gone on to become more economically sound than sorority women, and by and large their houses boasted newer furniture, top-of-the-line air-conditioning units, and, “As our eagle-eyed sister Denise Andora recently pointed out,” she said at the top of the next chapter meeting, “even clearer glass than we do.”

The ploy was condoned that evening, and I’ve heard rumblings that the girls are still at it today.

Denise tapped her long nails on that durable, reflection-controlled glass and groaned almost sexually. “God, that’s good stuff,” she said.

“Would you like us to leave you alone with the glass, Denise?” Sharon asked, deadpan.

“To hell with Roger.” Denise planted a wet one on the limpid surface. “This glass and I are going to live a very long and happy life together.”

Sometimes, when I get an unfavorable outcome in court, when I start thinking justice may be a fallacy after all, I remember that Salvador Dalí died six hours before Denise’s killer went to the electric chair. January 23, 1989: look it up. The passing of one of the world’s most celebrated and eccentric artists ensured that the execution of some lowlife in Central Florida was not the top news story of the day, and he would have dead-man-walked to the execution chamber bereft over that. More than his own freedom, more than the chance to make me sorry for what I did to him, what he wanted was a spectacle. On these bad days, I like to think that Denise is up there, wherever it is truly smashing women go when they die, and that she’d managed to pull a few strings. Overshadowed his death the way he did her fleeting time on this earth. Revenge is a dish best served cold. The vixens of As the World Turns taught us that.





“The future—she was looking forward to it very much.”


—AUNT OF ONE OF THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY VICTIMS, 1978





January 15, 1978

Five minutes before

It must have been more than hunger pains that roused me, but at the time all I wanted was to go downstairs and make myself a peanut butter sandwich and fall right back to sleep.

I rolled out of bed, stretching, groaning when I saw myself in the small oval mirror tacky-glued to the wall. I’d fallen asleep fully clothed, using my textbook for a pillow. After I’d posted the volunteer schedule to the bulletin board outside the bathrooms, I’d moved on to the reading for Monday morning’s American Political Thought, and now my cheek bore a faint printing of the Equal Rights Amendment. I rubbed at it hard with the heel of my hand, but Alice Paul’s words wouldn’t so much as smudge.

Perks of chapter presidency started with living alone in the big balcony room off the front set of stairs and ended there. The bay window, the privacy, fooled some girls into thinking they wanted to run for the position, until they took the time to consider how much thankless work it was on top of your regular course load. It was the inverse for me. The meetings, budgeting, and managing, the litigating of the slights small and smaller—those were the draw. I fell into a depression with too much free time on my hands, and I dreaded going out, dating, guys, the whole scene. My figure had helped me secure a respectable boyfriend freshman year, and while kissing him didn’t exactly set my heart on fire, I’d kept him around for expediency’s sake.