Friends Like These(13)

I tried to breathe. I owed $80,000, plus interest, and it was three months past due. How much time did I honestly think they were going to give me? The cable company got revenge faster than that.

I stared down at my feet for a long time before finally pulling my Marlboros from my pocket. I tapped one out and stuck it in my mouth, lit it, and inhaled. When I exhaled, the smoke expanded into an outsize cloud. Okay. I was going to be okay. Actually, I felt a little sharper. Nothing like a little death threat to clear out the haze. I’d figure something out. I always did.

Maybe if I was just straight with Finch about the Serpentine situation, he’d see the humor in it. Maybe he’d even lend me the 80K. After all, Finch understood irony. He’d built an entire career on fucking with people— the millennial Brooklyn Banksy known for high-impact, satirical conceptual art. These days it was usually video combined with large sculptural elements and paintings, not nearly as edgy as it once was now that it was mostly paid for by generous corporate sponsors. But Finch had become famous for the things he’d once done without permission. Like repainting overnight a series of huge Nike billboards on West Broadway in SoHo, replacing the punchy JUST DO IT with directives like FEEL FAT AND INADEQUATE. BE STRESSED AND INHUMAN. ACCEPT YOU WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH. The black-and-white billboards had been the talk of the city for at least a week, during which time one comedy of errors after another— orchestrated by Finch— had kept them from being painted over. It was clever as hell. You had to give that to Finch; he was always clever. Maybe he’d appreciate me being clever.

Except what was clever about fucking over your most important artist? No, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Finch was going to go ballistic when he heard about the Serpentine. He’d been excited— it was a prestige thing. I couldn’t tell Finch. And I could not ask Jonathan for more money either. He’d already done so much for me.

When I looked back through the window this time, Finch was staring right at me. Phone in his hands, like he was waiting for a call himself. I held up my hand with the cigarette and smiled. Just out here smoking. Be in when I finish. I needed to keep my shit together.

As I took one last, long drag, I heard a trickling sound coming from behind the house. I tilted my head toward it and closed my eyes. A creek probably, maybe even one leading to the river— the Hudson River. Alice. She was always there, wasn’t she? In every fucked-up choice I made.

For sure since that night on the roof. One second that guy had been sitting on the edge, next second he was . . . gone. At least it seemed that way to me. I hadn’t been watching that close; I’d been too busy dealing with Alice. She’d been screaming at me ever since I put my hands on that girl at the party. The girl whose name I didn’t even know, who was really just another example of the things I kept doing so that Alice would break up with me. Not consciously. But that night on the roof it was finally dawning on me that maybe that’s what I really wanted. I loved Alice. I was out of my head for her. But it was too much. She was too much; we were too much together.

And so there we were, passing around a bottle of cheap vodka on the roof of Main Building at 2:00 a.m. with some random guy Alice had clearly brought along to piss me off. But then he’d zeroed in on Maeve and Alice forgot all about him and remembered how pissed off she was at me.

“He fell. He fell,” Derrick kept saying afterward. “He was drunk and he fell. This isn’t anybody’s fault. It was an accident.”

Stephanie had wanted to call the police, of course. Because she was a sensible person.

“But we’re up here illegally,” Jonathan said as we all looked over the edge. “Keith is high. I’m high. We’ll get arrested.”

“What if he’s still alive!” Stephanie shouted.

Jonathan hushed her. “And what if Vassar kicks us out? All of us will be screwed. And you can forget about ever going to law school.”

Meanwhile, Alice was crouched in a ball on the ground. “Oh my God. This is all my fault. Oh my God,” she said over and over again, rocking as she gripped her knees.

Maeve peered over the edge. “It— it really doesn’t look like he’s moving. And his neck . . . I don’t see how he could be alive.”

“Oh my God. This is all my fault,” Alice whispered. “He wouldn’t have even been here . . .”

Jonathan looked over the side. “He’s definitely— with his neck like that. He’s already dead.”

“We don’t know that,” Stephanie said, but she sounded defeated.

“Campus security is going to see him, anyway,” Derrick had added. “He’s in front of Main Building. Their office is right there. I think Jonathan is right; we need to go. All of us getting arrested isn’t going to help anything.”

Back inside the house, I avoided Finch and joined Derrick at the window. We stood in silence for a moment.

“It’s wrong that Finch is here, Keith,” Derrick said finally.

I laughed. And it did strike me as funny that this, of all things, would be what Derrick thought I’d done wrong.

“I’m serious.” Derrick turned to look at me, eyes all narrow like he was pissed for real. “It’s messed up.”

“Messed up?” I laughed again.

But it was a little unsettling. Derrick was the guy who usually helped you forget all the bad shit you did. He didn’t call people out.