Page 31 of Summer and the City (The Carrie Diaries 2)

But apparently she doesn’t protest on Saturdays, because she picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Hello?” she asked suspiciously.

“Miranda? It’s Carrie Bradshaw.”

“Oh.”

“I was wondering . . . what are you doing right now? Do you want to get a cup of coffee or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh,” I said again, disappointed.

I guess she felt sorry for me, because she asked, “Where do you live?”

“Chelsea?”

“I’m on Bank Street. There’s a coffee shop around the corner. As long as I don’t have to take the subway, I guess I could meet you.”

We spent two hours at the coffee shop, discovering all kinds of things we had in common. Like we both went to our local high schools. And we both loved the book The Consensus as kids. When I told her I knew the author, Mary Gordon Howard, she laughed. “Somehow, I knew you were the type who would.” And over yet another cup of coffee, we began to have that magical, unspoken realization that we were going to be friends.

Then we decided we were hungry, but also admitted we didn’t have any money. Hence my plan to cook us dinner.

“Why do magazines do this to women?” Miranda complains now, glaring at Vogue. “It’s all about creating insecurity. Trying to make women feel like they’re not good enough. And when women don’t feel like they’re good enough, guess what?”

“What?” I ask, picking up the grocery bag.

“Men win. That’s how they keep us down,” she concludes.

“Except the problem with women’s magazines is that they’re written by women,” I point out.

“That only shows you how deep this thing goes. Men have made women coconspirators in their own oppression. I mean, if you spend all your time worrying about leg hair, how can you possibly have time to take over the world?”

I want to point out that shaving your legs takes about five minutes, leaving plenty of time for world-taking-over, but I know she only means it as a rhetorical question.

“Are you sure your roommate won’t mind my coming over?” she asks.

“She’s not really my roommate. She’s engaged. She lives with her boyfriend. She’s in the Hamptons anyway.”

“Lucky you,” Miranda says as we start up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. By the third flight, she’s panting. “How do you do this every day?”

“It’s better than living with Peggy.”

“That Peggy sounds like a nightmare. People like that should be in therapy.”

“She probably is, and it’s not working.”

“Then she needs to find a new shrink,” Miranda says, puffing. “I could recommend mine.”

“You see a shrink?” I ask, startled, fitting my key into the lock.

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Because everyone needs to see a shrink. Otherwise you keep repeating the same unhealthy patterns.”

“But what if you don’t have unhealthy patterns?” I throw open the door and Miranda stumbles in. She flops onto the futon.