that was her home or, worse, her father who was too often drunk.
If Kate had perhaps outgrown Bina, who’d dropped out of Brooklyn College and worked at her father’s chiropractic office, it didn’t stop her from loving her. It was just that they had different interests and none of Bina’s would appeal to Elliot or any other of her Manhattan friends.
‘Elliot,’ Kate said sternly, as they made their way down the street. ‘You know your interest in Bina is only idle curiosity.’
‘Come on,’ Elliot coaxed. ‘Let me come. Anyway, it’s a free country. The Constitution says so.’
Kate snorted. ‘Like the US Constitution, I believe in the separation of church and state.’
‘No,’ retorted Elliot, ‘you believe in the separation of gay and straight.’
‘That’s not fair. I let you have dinner with Rita and me only a week ago.’ She wasn’t going to let him manipulate her with his politically correct blackmail. ‘You’re not meeting Bina because even though she’s my oldest friend, you have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with her.’
‘I like people I have nothing in common with,’ Elliot argued. ‘That’s why I like you and live with Brice.’
‘Don’t be greedy, you’re getting to meet Michael tonight,’ said Kate. ‘Isn’t that enough for two yentas like you and Brice?’
‘Yeah,’ said Elliot, giving in. ‘It will have to do.’
Kate laughed and said, ‘Come on, I’m going to be late for my girly date. Let me give you some advice I gave Jennifer Whalen just a couple of hours ago. “Try to make your own friends dear.”’
They were at the IRT subway entrance. She gave Elliot a big smile and then hugged him goodbye. He shrugged, admitting his defeat. As she descended into the shadow of the subway, Elliot shouted after her, ‘Don’t forget; dinner’s at eight!’
‘See ya there!’ she yelled back and ran to get the train.
Kate and Bina walked down Lafayette Street, gazing in the windows of the fashion boutiques and art galleries that lined the SoHo strip. Kate looked and felt at home in SoHo. She would have liked to live in the neighborhood, but it was far too pricey for a school psychologist’s salary. Her apartment was on the West Side, in Chelsea, but Kate could pass as a downtown hipster. Bina Horowitz, on the other hand, was still all Brooklyn: her dark hair too done, her clothes all ‘matchy-matchy’, as Barbie used to say back in high school. Short, a little dumpy, and wearing too much gold, the truth was that Bina stuck out like a sore thumb among the modelesque shoppers converging in one of the coolest sections of downtown Manhattan. That didn’t stop Kate from loving her friend dearly but she was grateful for all she herself had learned about style from Brice, college, Manhattan boutiques and her current New York friends. She’d left her Brooklyn look far behind, thank goodness.
‘My God, Katie, I don’t know how you live here,’ Bina said. ‘These people in Manhattan are the reason girls all over the country go anorexic.’ Kate just laughed, though Bina was far from wrong. Bina continued to crane her head around at every opportunity, slowing them down to look at a pedestrian painting of a nude at which she raised her brows, a dress shop window where the clothes were torn into strips, and to marvel at the boutique called Center for the Dull. Kate had to explain it was just a clothing store like Yellow Rat Bastard – a store that Kate didn’t shop in though she did have a shopping bag of theirs.
‘Why all the confusing names?’ Bina asked. ‘And isn’t it hot?’ she added, fanning herself frantically with a flyer for a failing off-off-Broadway show that some guy had just shoved into her hand as they walked by. He hadn’t tried to palm one off on Kate, but then she didn’t look like the kind of person who accepted garbage.
‘Well, it is nearly summer,’ Kate observed. She tried to quicken their pace – the salon was notorious for demanding promptness – but Bina was Bina and she simply couldn’t be rushed or silenced. The Horowitz family had taken Kate in when she was eleven and Kate knew practically everything about Bina. Kate had once done the math and realized Mrs Horowitz had fed her more than five hundred meals (most of them made with chicken fat). Dr Horowitz had taught her to ride a two-wheeler bike when Kate’s own father was too drunk or too lazy (or both) to bother to do it. Bina’s brother Dave had taught the two of them to swim in the municipal pool, and Kate still swam laps three times a week. Kate was grateful and loved Bina, but she had to admit that Bina was the Mistress of the Obvious in most of her observations.
‘It’s really hot,’ Bina said, as if Kate needed proof of her belief.
Back in Brooklyn, when Kate had had no other outlet and longed for more sophisticated friends – like Elliot and Brice and Rita – with whom she could banter or talk about books, Bina had sometimes annoyed her. But now that she had a circle of intellectual, cosmopolitan pals, she could give up the frustration over Bina’s provincial interests and conversation and simply love her good heart.
‘It’s really hot,’ Bina repeated – a habit she had when Kate didn’t respond to her.
‘Is it hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn?’ Kate asked her, teasing.
‘It’s always hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn,’ Bina confirmed, completely missing Kate’s mild irony. Bina definitely had an irony deficiency. ‘It’s all these damned sidewalks and all this traffic.’ Bina looked up and down Lafayette Street and shook her head in disgust. ‘I couldn’t live here,’ she muttered, as if the choice was hers and million-dollar lofts were an option she and Jack could consider. ‘I just couldn’t do it.’
‘And you don’t,’ Kate reminded her, ‘so what’s the problem?’
Bina stopped fanning herself abruptly, looked at Kate with wide-eyed appeal and meekly asked the question that she always asked midway through one of her anti-Manhattan tirades. ‘Am I being horrible?’
Kate felt a rush of affection overcome her annoyance and, as always, remembered why she loved Bina. Then she gave her the answer that she always did: ‘Same old Bina.’
‘Same old Kate,’ Bina responded, in the litany they’d used to make peace and settle differences for two decades.
Kate grinned. The two of them were right back on track. Kate could neither imagine introducing Bina to her Manhattan friends nor imagine life without Bina – although she sometimes tried. Bina absolutely refused to grow and that was both irritating and comforting to Kate – and sometimes downright embarrassing.
Just as they crossed Spring Street, Bina, as if reading Kate’s thoughts, virtually shouted, ‘God, look at him!’
Kate turned her head, expecting, at least, to see a mugging in progress. Instead, across the street a pierced and tattooed guy of about their own age was going about his business.
Not the slightest bit fazed by the local wildlife, Kate didn’t even comment and merely looked down at her watch. ‘We can’t be late,’ she warned Bina. ‘I have something special reserved.’ And, to change the subject – ‘So have you picked out a manicure color?’
Bina dragged her eyes away from the local
