Friends Like These(12)

I looked over at poor, sweet Maeve, who’d somehow gotten roped into our conversation. Maeve was a genuinely good person, despite her shitty childhood. She’d been physically abused, I was pretty sure, maybe even sexually, though she’d never gotten into specifics with me. It had made her origin painting almost impossible. In the end I’d painted Maeve with us, or the suggestion of us— hands, feet, an arm. Not alone. But not with them. Never with them.

Maeve was brave, too. She’d been the one to chase after me as I’d stormed off from Alice’s funeral in a rage. Alice’s nutso mom had screamed some vicious, halfway accurate stuff about Alice’s death being my fault. And so I’d taken it upon myself to tell her to fuck off, at her own daughter’s funeral.

“Today is the worst day,” Maeve said when she’d finally caught up with me. “But tomorrow will be better.”

Maeve had been wrong about things getting better. I’d known it then. I knew it now. But I loved her for believing in a version of the future where I made it through in one piece— where I made it through at all. Because the truth was, I’d always been irrational, impulsive, selfish— even before what happened to Alice. And, sure, my parents had spent my childhood fixated on hating each other, but they’d never laid a hand on my sister or me. And my sister Samantha was happy, well-adjusted. Normal. She was a doctor for God’s sake, happily married to Christina for four years now, a baby on the way. So what was my excuse for being such a mess?

“Hello, Keith.” Finch snapped his fingers in my face.

“Yeah, I’m listening, Finch,” I lied. “I’m always listening.”

“Maeve, seriously, you had to be there,” Finch went on, now that he had my full attention, that dickhead laugh stuck in the back of his throat. “She was the hottest girl in that club, and she was all over Keith. Probably would have gone down on him right there. And the motherfucker falls asleep. Just passes out. Boom, head on the table.”

Maeve’s eyes widened. She didn’t want to hear about this. She didn’t want me to be this way. Neither did I. Who fucking wanted this?

“Yeah, but she got her revenge,” I managed to add. “She put six hundred dollars’ worth of bottles on my card. Sent them to other tables on her way out.”

Maeve eyed me. “Keith, God, that’s so much money.”

She was right. So much money I didn’t have. So much money owed to all the wrong people— like the esteemed Serpentine Gallery in London, or my humorless friends from Staten Island.

“Good thing I keep you rich as shit, huh?” Finch reached over and clamped a hand around the back of my neck. He loved to joke about how much money I’d made from him. And by joke, I mean he loved to say vicious shit that he definitely believed. And he had made me a lot of money— it was just long gone now.

My phone rang then, super loud inside my jacket pocket. Jace— it had to be. Maybe he’d drive up from the city and deliver if I paid him enough. Of course, that would require actual cash. But that was a detail. I’d work it out.

“Probably London calling with your fucking specs,” I said as I stood. “I’ll be right back.”

“London?” Finch shouted after me as I started across the room. “It’s after midnight there, you fucker!”

It definitely wasn’t London calling. Six weeks ago, the Serpentine Gallery had canceled Finch’s show. Canceled it because I owed them money for setup on a previous show. Fucking artist of mine that needed a whole second level constructed for his installation— complete with an elevator. I’d agreed to pay 70 percent of the cost. The show was a huge success— buzz, reviews. But no one had bought a fucking thing. That was how I’d landed in my current predicament, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul— where Peter is an actual mobster whose wife likes to overpay for art she doesn’t understand. And Paul turns out to be me, jamming all the money up my nose.

Outside on the porch, it was cold as shit and dark, the only light from the one small bulb overhead, a wall of darkness beyond. I was freezing in my short sleeves. I wiped a hand across my face as my nose began to run. When you came down, your insides also liquefied.

“Hey, what’s up, man?” I answered. Jace and I were tight. Weren’t we? Maybe he’d even front me the cash. “Jace, man, are you there?”

“We see you. You’re standing on the porch of a white house in Kaaterskill.” A man’s voice— slow and steady and dead fucking calm. “And you have a hand on the back of your head.”

My heart slammed against my ribs. I looked around— I did have a hand on my head, standing under that bright porch light. I knew who they were, of course. This wasn’t the first time they’d called. They’d come by the gallery, too.

“I’m going to pay you,” I said.

“Yeah, you are. By the end of business tomorrow. Or we’re coming after your friends.” The line went dead.

Pound, pound. pound, went the jackhammer in my chest. I put a hand on the side of the house to steady myself. Holy fuck. My friends? But of course a criminal in a $2,000 suit can figure a workaround for your own death wish. I looked over my shoulder toward the windows to see if anyone inside had been watching. The world looked stretched and far away, like I was staring through a tube. I could just make out Finch still talking to Maeve inside. Her arms were wrapped protectively around her body.