They had known each other for twenty-five years. The hostile intimacy of loose-moraled women whom a man enriches and then deserts, whom another man ruins, the fractious friendship of rivals lying in wait for the first wrinkle or white hair. The companionship of pragmatic women, skilled at financial games, but the one a miser and the other a sybarite . . . Such bonds matter. Another, stronger connection came to unite them later in life: Chéri.
