Page 27 of Swan Song

“Oh,” Leslee says. “Where is he looking?”

“The usual places,” Phoebe says. “Middlesex, St. George’s, Milton. But the one he has his heart set on is Tiffin Academy.”

“Tiffin!” Leslee shouts. “We know at least half the board at Tiffin.” She waves a hand. “We’ll see to it that he gets in.”

At this, Andrea bumps Delilah’s leg.

Phoebe, who never loses her composure, completely loses her composure. Her composure, Delilah thinks, is rolling around somewhere under the table. “You’d do that?” Phoebe says. “Put in a word when the time comes? Obviously you can’t guarantee admission—”

“I’ll pull every string,” Leslee says. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for writing our nominating letter.” Leslee sighs. “I would love to be a member here.”

Delilah sets her wineglass down on the wrought-iron table harder than she means to. “Nominating letter?” she says. “That was sweet of you, Phoebes.” The legs of her chair scrape against the brick patio as she pushes it back from the table. “Excuse me a moment.”

“Delilah,” Phoebe says.

Delilah slams into the women’s lounge. Phoebe is writing the Richardsons a nominating letter? She’s known them five minutes! Back when Delilah and Jeffrey were applying, Phoebe said she’d rather not write the nominating letter because she didn’t want to be accused of trying to get her friends in. She’d ended up writing a seconding letter, which had apparently done nothing.

The lounge has a seating area with a sofa upholstered in cheerful pink and white stripes and two pink Ultrasuede armchairs. This has never made sense to Delilah—who would want to hang out in what is essentially the ladies’ room?—but now she collapses in one of the armchairs and thinks how nice it is to have a comfortable place to sit while she processes her best friend’s betrayal.

Delilah realizes she’s being petty, even ridiculous. Everyone else in the world has a problem bigger than not getting into a private club. But even so… if the Richardsons get into the Field and Oar, Delilah will never speak to Phoebe again.

Nominating letter!

The women’s lounge, as far as Delilah can tell, is empty, but even if it weren’t, she can’t hold her frustration inside, not after three glasses of wine and two hours in this hideous dress. “Bahhhhhhh!” she cries.

A toilet flushes, and Delilah hears water running in a sink; the bathrooms are around the corner. She closes her eyes, praying that whoever it is will leave the lounge without comment.

No such luck.

“Are you okay?” a voice asks. Then there’s a gasp. “Delilah?”

My life, Delilah thinks, is officially over.

It’s Blond Sharon.

When Blond Sharon finished reading her character-study scene to her creative-writing class over Zoom, there was a lengthy silence.

Pow! Sharon thought. Her piece had rendered them speechless.

Lucky Zambrano cleared his throat. “Nancy, Willow, do either of you have comments for Sharon?”

Both women bowed their heads.

Lucky said, “Well, the physical description of Coco is quite vivid, although a bit of a stereotype, I’m afraid. Wearing black, the flamingo tattoo, the Joan Jett hair, the army duffel.”

“She was a hell of a lot more interesting than the other woman, the one with the shiny hair and the whatever-brand blazer,” Nancy said.

“Veronica Beard blazer,” Sharon clarified.

“Sharon, please wait until the end to respond,” Lucky said.

“I found it predictable,” Willow said. “Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt ‘Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.’”

Sharon pressed her lips together to keep herself from shouting, I did not use ChatGPT!

“ChatGPT will be the end of writing as we know it,” Lucky said. “And while I’m not suggesting that Sharon used this egregious shortcut, I would suggest starting this piece fresh with different characters.”

“Different characters?” Sharon said, aghast.

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