A coy voice accompanied the patterning of knuckles on my door. “I think it might snow.” I looked up from the volunteer schedules papering my hand-me-down secretary’s desk to see Denise Andora standing on the threshold, hands clasped girlishly at her pelvis.
“Nice try.” I laughed. Denise was angling to borrow my shearling coat. Though the winter of 1978 had brought a deep freeze to the Panhandle that killed the azalea trees along the Georgia border, it was never cold enough to snow.
“Please, Pamela!” Denise put her hands together in prayer, repeating her plea over red fingertips with crescendoing urgency. “Please. Please. Please. Nothing I have goes.” She turned in place to prove her point. I only know the minute details of what she was wearing that night because later there was a description of her outfit in the paper: thin turtleneck tucked into snap-front jeans, suede belt and suede boots in matching chestnut brown, opal earrings, and a beloved silver charm bracelet. My best friend was approximately one hundred feet tall and weighed less than I did as a child, but by senior year I’d learned to manage my envy like a migraine. What triggered that star-seeing pain was looking too closely at Denise when she decided she needed attention from men.
“Don’t make me beg.” She stomped her foot a little. “Roger asked some of the girls if I was coming tonight.”
I put my pencil down. “Denise,” I admonished.
I’d long ago lost count of the number of times Denise and Roger had called it quits only to encounter each other out at night, however many warm beers and deep lovelorn glances it took to forgive the spiteful things they’d each said to and about the other, but this most recent split didn’t feel so much like a split as it did a severing with a dirty kitchen knife, quite literally infecting Denise, who vomited everything she ate for nearly a week and had to be briefly admitted to the hospital for dehydration. When I picked her up at the curb, she swore Roger was out of her system for good. I flushed twice for good measure, she’d said, laughing feebly as I helped her out of the hospital-mandated wheelchair and into the passenger seat of the car.
Denise shrugged now with sudden, suspicious indifference, sauntering over to my window. “It’s only a few blocks to Turq House. On the night they’re calling for three inches of snow. I’ll be a little cold but”—she swung the lock lever and pushed her palms against the glass, leaving behind prints that would soon have no living match—“maybe Roger will volunteer to warm me up.” She faced me, shoulders thrust back in the frostbitten room. Unless her parents were coming to visit for the weekend, Denise’s bra remained collecting pills in her top drawer.
I could feel my willpower eroding. “Do you promise to get it dry-cleaned after?”
“Yes, ma’am, Pam Perfect, ma’am.” Denise clicked her heels with a militant clang. Pam Perfect was her not-entirely-affectionate nickname for me, cribbed from the popular prime-time commercials featuring the woman with the feathered bangs, talking about the pure vegetable spray that saves her time, money, and calories. With PAM cooking, she trumpets while sliding a silver-skinned fish from frying pan to plate, dinner always turns out PAM perfect.
Denise was the first friend I’d made at Florida State University, but recently we’d found ourselves at an impasse. The rot at the core of Panhellenic leadership had always been favoritism, with former presidents hewing close to the rule book for some of their sisters while allowing their friends to get away with murder. When I ran for the position and won, I knew Denise had expected leniency with my name at the top of the executive board. Instead, I was so determined to do better than those who had come before me, to be remembered as a fair and impartial leader, that Denise had more strikes against her than any other sister that quarter. Every time she blew off Monday’s chapter meeting or postponed a service trip, it was like she was daring me to kick her out. The other girls watched us like two whitetail bucks who had put our heads down and locked antlers. Our treasurer, an auburn-haired Miss Florida finalist who’d grown up hunting in Franklin County, was always saying that one of us better submit before we got stuck and had to be sawed apart. She’d seen it happen in the wild.
“You can wear the coat,” I relented.
Denise capered to my closet with childlike glee that made me feel like an awful shrew. Her eyes rolled back as she slipped her arms into the silk-lined coat. I had beautiful clothes that fit like a second, softer skin, thanks to a mother who devoted her life to caring about such things. Maybe I would care too if I wore half my wardrobe as well as Denise. As it was, I had a round Irish face that contradicted my figure. That’s what I had—not a body but a figure. The disconnect between my freckled apple cheeks and pinup proportions was extreme enough that I often felt the need to apologize for it. I should be prettier or less, depending on who was looking and where.