2.A Piece of Cake I

“You should try some of this cake, Linda. It’s really really good. You won’t find better cheesecake anywhere in New York.”

Linda sat across the table from her friend Alice, eyeing her enviously as she attacked her dessert with gusto.

“You’re not worried about getting fat? I mean with your career and all.” Alice, a voluptuous young woman with long flowing blond hair, had aspirations to be an actress.

“Nah. I exercise.”

“I never saw you work out,” Linda replied skeptically.

Alice grinned mischievously. “I work out in bed. They say it’s the best exercise. Did you know every time you fuck you consume five hundred calories?”

Linda, familiar with how her friend liked to brag about her sexual exploits, smiled wanly.

“How about you, Lin? Getting enough these days?”

“Yeah.” She looked at her friend warily.

“Are you still on that diet?”

“I guess so.”

“What do you mean, you guess? You either are or you aren’t. Here, have a little piece just to taste it. A little bit can’t hurt.” Alice cut off a small piece on the corner, speared it with her fork and held it out to Linda.

“Please don’t wave that in front of my face,” Linda said irritably.

Alice giggled, then popped the piece into her own mouth. Suddenly her face assumed a somewhat theatrical look of surprise. “I know what it is,” she intoned portentously. Then her voice dropped into an artificially low register. “The Master has forbidden it.”

Linda blushed. “What are you talking about?”

Alice laughed. “I’m talking about that boyfriend of yours. Didn’t you tell me a few months ago that he wanted you to lose weight and suggested laying off desserts?”

“I’m sorry I ever mentioned it,” Linda said glumly.

“Come on, try some. Prove you’re your own woman.”

“No!” Linda practically shouted this out, then glanced nervously around the diner to see if any of the other customers had noticed. Now she turned to Alice, and smiling a sweet, sarcastic smile said, “I could if I wanted to, but I won’t give you the satisfaction.”

Alice chuckled. “Now that’s the Linda I know. Feisty. I guess your boyfriend hasn’t completely tamed you.”

“His name’s Manny.” It annoyed her, Alice’s reluctance to refer to him by name. “Why are you needling me?”

Alice now turned serious. “I don’t like what’s happened to you since you met him. You know I hardly see you anymore. I suggest we get together, I invite you to parties, and you’re always welcome to bring him you know, but it’s always ‘Manny wants to do this’ or ‘Manny wants to do that.’ It’s like you’re his slave. Hey girl, this is the Eighties. Ever hear of Women’s Liberation?”

While her friend was speaking Linda was looking away and drumming her fingers on the table. But in response to her last presumably rhetorical question she turned and said “How’s that film going?”

Alice had recently obtained a small part in a low budget independent film. “Trying to change the subject? I finished the film weeks ago. I told you that.”

“Are you still sleeping with the director?”

Alice giggled girlishly. “Are you trying to make a point?”

“Well, sleeping with a guy to get a job doesn’t sound very liberated.”

Alice looked up with a smug expression. “You’ve never met him. I bet you think he’s some middle-aged guy, bald and potbellied. Actually he’s thirty and gorgeous. But I would have slept with him to get the part even if he had been middle-aged and bald and potbellied. What’s wrong with that? He uses me, I use him. That’s my idea of equality. I’m no longer seeing him, to answer your question, but when I did, I didn’t let him tell me what to do, except on the set of course.”

Linda stared at the table for a while, then looked up and said “Look, Alice. I know you don’t like Manny. You never have. We’re never going to agree on this so why don’t we just drop it?”

“Okay, I give in. Manny is wonderful. That is an established truth which is no longer subject to debate.” By now Alice had finished her cake and she picked up the check, which the waitress had just left. “How much tip should we leave?”

A few minutes later they left the diner. They walked silently until they reached a subway station. “You going back uptown?” Alice asked.

“Yeah, but I feel like walking a bit.”

“Hey, you’re not mad at me, are you?”

“No,” Linda protested, a bit defensively.

“Look, I’m sorry I teased you. It’s just that ... we’ve been friends a long time and lately, it seems like you’ve been shutting me out of your life.”

“I’m sorry,” Linda replied, her voice breaking. Suddenly she seemed on the verge of tears.

Alice appeared taken aback by Linda’s sudden display of emotion and responded with a warm smile. “Hey, it’s okay. Look, I’ve got to run. Keep in touch, will ya?” She gave her friend a sudden impulsive hug, then hurried down the stairs into the subterranean passage.

Linda trudged north along the avenue in a somber mood. She felt a growing estrangement from her friend and it hurt her. Alice was her oldest and best friend; the two girls had grown up together, lived in the same neighborhood in that same dreary, decaying Midwestern factory town. Two years older than her, Alice had been the first to leave. Blessed with a beautiful face and a curvaceous figure, she had joined the high school drama club and after graduation decided to head for New York and try her luck as an actress. A few years later Linda followed her. While Alice was motivated by ambition, Linda was simply running away, fleeing her squalid depressing home, her father’s drinking and her mother’s nagging, and their endless squabbling. When she was of age and had saved a little money she bought a bus ticket to New York. Alice let her stay with her until she could get settled, a stay that ended up being permanent when Alice’s roommate moved out. Knowing nobody else in New York and with hardly any money, she would never have dared to come if it hadn’t been for Alice. And then she would never have met Manny. So it was partly to her friend that she owed her present happiness. It was true Alice didn’t like Manny, although they had only met once. It was early in their relationship, when Linda and Alice were still living together in a two bedroom apartment in Soho.