Free Justin Kramon by Finny (v5) Page B

addict.
    “They sound funny,” Judith said. “I’d love to meet them sometime.”
    “Careful what you wish for,” Finny said.
    “No, really. I mean it. On some break. I could come visit.”
    “You could come during spring break if you wanted.”
    “It’s settled, then,” Judith said. “I’m going to Shorty Finn’s house for spring break.” Here Judith got up and pulled Finny off her bed by the arms. They did a little ballroom dancing routine they’d made up just for fun, Finny dipping and spinning Judith. When they came together in a final embrace, Finny felt the curves of Judith’s womanly body pressed against her own childish frame.
    “Oh great,” Finny said. It sounded like the flat way she delivered punch lines.
    Judith’s explanations of her own family were a little harder to make out. It seemed she didn’t really spend time with them the way Finny did with hers. Her parents didn’t talk to each other anymore, Judith said, except when it had to do with money or plans for Judith. Her mom and dad lived in separate parts of their apartment in New York—“wings,” Judith called them, “separate wings.” They lived on the Upper West Side, in a building called the Beresford, which Judith said was one of the fanciest buildings in New York.
    “If you tell anyone in New York that you live in the Beresford, they’ll think you’re a snob.”
    She said that most of the other people in the building were famous, or at least old and rich. She saw movie stars in the elevator, and once Peter Jennings had given her a ride in his car. The lobby of the Beresford was like a museum, with chandeliers and antique end tables and Oriental rugs. If you tripped and fell, you might break ten thousand dollars’ worth of furniture in one clumsy swoop. (Finny of course imagined she’d be the one to do that, if she ever visited.)
    “But it’s all terribly boring,” Judith said, in a way that made her sound much older. “All the smiling and bowing doormen. It’s so stupid.”
    “It sounds very glamorous to me,” Finny said.
    “Well it’s not.”
    This was the first time Judith had gotten agitated with Finny. Finny heard her friend’s mattress creaking as she adjusted positions. And she wondered: Why would Judith make such a big deal of all the chandeliers and riding in Peter Jennings’s car if she hated it so much?
    “My dad has a girlfriend,” Judith said.
    “You mean a lady he takes out?” Finny was trying to get a grasp on this strange world.
    “No, I mean a woman who looks like my sister. I mean, she’s twenty-five or something. But she actually comes over. While I’m there. He doesn’t tell us, but I’ve heard them together.” Judith had dropped her aristocratic way of speaking. She sounded like a child now.
    Finny was about to ask what she heard her dad and his girlfriend doing, but then she realized. “Oh,” she said. “That’s awful. What does your mom do?”
    “She gets on boards.”
    “What do you mean?” Finny pictured the woman on table-tops, swatting at her husband with a broom.
    “I mean, like at Thorndon. Or different museums. Pretty much anything she can throw a lot of money at. I don’t even think she knows all the boards she’s on.”
    “Well at least she’s being generous.”
    “Tell me about your brother,” Judith said, and Finny understood she was trying to change the subject. “Actually,” Judith went on, “I don’t even recall his name.”
    In Judith’s company, Finny felt as if she moved behind a protective shield. Even Mrs. Barksdale mostly left her alone, though Finny heard her yelling at other girls numerous times. Giving it to them , Finny and Judith called it. Old Yeller is giving it to someone. Mrs. Barksdale would start at a medium volume in her rasping, discordant voice, and as she gave it to some student—who’d shown up late for morning meeting, or swiped some fruit from the dining hall—her voice gradually rose to an almost frenzied pitch, a