Things aren’t going well for me, I missed a philosophy exam & have no excuse & can’t make myself lie. I don’t know . . . am I unhappy (is it that simple?) or am I coming down with some sort of exotic illness (is it that simple?) Why don’t you drop by & see me sometime . . . or I could come over there & see you. . . .

Yet she felt a revulsion for Imogene; she really disliked her. That lazy drunken dip of her head, her lipstick smeared across her face, sliding her arms around the neck of . . . whoever it had been: kissing open-mouthed, simulating passion. Would you two let us alone for a few minutes, Imogene drawled. Would you two like to go for a stroll, for a few minutes?

I’ll come over there, Marya wrote, and strangle you with that pretentious braid of yours.

In all she wrote a dozen notes, some by hand and some on the typewriter. But she sent only the first (“why don’t you drop by & see me sometime . . . or I could come over there & see you”), not expecting, and not receiving, an answer.

WHAT IS FICTITIOUS in a friendship, Marya pondered, and what is “real”: the world outside the head, the world inside: but whose world? from whose point of view?

If Imogene died . . .

If Imogene were dying . . .

She wouldn’t lift a hand to prevent that death!—so she thought.

At the same time she quizzed herself about how to respond, should Imogene really ask her to be a bridesmaid. (She had declined being a bridesmaid at Alice’s wedding; but then she had the excuse of schoolwork, distance.) Imogene’s wedding was going to be a costly affair held in New York sometime the following year. The bridesmaid’s dress, the shoes . . . the shoes alone . . . would be staggeringly expensive.

I can’t afford it, Marya would say.

I can’t afford you.

THOUGH THEY HADN’T any classes together this semester Marya learned that Imogene had been absent from one of her lectures for three days running. So she simply went, one rainy April afternoon, to Imogene’s residence—to that absurd white-columned “house” on Masefield Avenue—and rapped hard on Imogene’s door; and let herself in before Imogene could call out sleepily, Who is it . . . ?

The shades were crookedly drawn. Clothes and towels and books were strewn about. Imogene lay half undressed on the bed with the quilted spread pulled over her; the room smelled of something acrid and medicinal.

“Oh Marya,” Imogene said guiltily.

“Are you sick?” Marya asked.

They had both spoken at the same time.

“A headache, cramps, nothing worth mentioning,” Imogene said hoarsely. “The tail-end of this shitty flu that’s been going around.”