A Chilling Friendship - Part VII
Now that she’s dead, I can write about her without fear of lawsuits or reprisals. We were best friends, almost sisters, until we weren’t. Jealousy overtook her, and as a result she intentionally and maliciously tried to sabotage my career. Revenge is a dish best served cold, they say. But my revenge was hot hot hot.
THIS IS PART 7 of a TEN-PART FICTION STORY
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When Caroline looked at me now, it wasn’t with the kindness and concern of a good friend, but rather with increasing coolness, even dislike. She didn’t ask me a single question about my relationship to Ray. In fact, that was the first sign of her growing displeasure – not talking about him at all. We began seeing each other less. The dinners and get-togethers of the past, stopped. So did the phone calls and conversation. From Caroline’s end, there was a cold, eerie silence that didn’t bode well.
At the time, I was back in school, taking a graduate seminar in creative writing with the late Stanley Elkin, a well-known author who’d written a ton of books and suffered from multiple sclerosis. Stanley and I became quite good friends (I was the one who scored weed for him, which he claimed was beneficial to his health).There were only five of us in the class and I had the misfortune of being his favorite – at one point he threw a pen at a student who’d made a foolish remark, and then pointed at me, saying, “She’s the only one who can write in here!” Gratifying as that was, it caused me to squirm with embarrassment.
I had shown Stanley a manuscript of mine that he thought was good enough to submit to a publisher. In fact, he set up a date for me to meet with an editor in Boston, a consultation he himself would attend. The meeting was to take place late on a Thursday afternoon. Caroline, who knew about the meeting, invited me to lunch that day. She was a good cook, and as she whipped up an omelet, she poured out two glasses of wine, gesturing for me to sit down and relax.
Well, once I’d had even a sip of alcohol, I had to have another and another until I became completely inebriated, and began to slur my words. Somewhere in there, Caroline (who was aware of my problem with alcohol) lit up a joint and between the booze and the marijuana, I turned into a zombie.
As the time for my meeting grew closer, she offered to drive me there. By then, I was kind of babbling – not that that made much difference to me; I was too far gone to know what I was saying. What actually went on in that meeting I will never know. Caroline waited outside in the car while I made a total fool of myself, talking gibberish and spewing all sorts of nonsense. A very embarrassed Stanley had to walk me back to the car. “See that she makes it home,” he said, with a disgusted look on his face. It was the last time I ever saw him.