Friends Like These(23)

I can’t imagine what’s brought him back now. For sure he’s not a big podcast listener, otherwise he’d have known better. The River devoted an entire episode to the search for him: “The Disappearing Man.”

It isn’t until I’m in the driver’s seat that I look up at the woman again. Her mouth trembles, like she’s fighting a smile. I glare at her as I lower my window.

“If I see you anywhere near here again . . . if I see you, period, I’ll have you arrested,” I say evenly. “And you’d be surprised how fucking long I can misplace a suspect. You could sit in jail for days.”





DERRICK


FRIDAY, 8:22 P.M.

“Not bad,” Finch said, surveying the massive bedroom Jonathan had shown us into.

It was at the front of the house, with denim-colored walls and sharp, bright white moldings. The two double beds were covered in swollen pillows and crisp pale-blue linens with a swirled white-dot pattern— like pinpricks of light overhead at a planetarium. It reminded me of that five-star hotel Beth and I had stayed at in Rome on our honeymoon, the one we couldn’t afford— and yet Beth had still been disappointed in it, because it wasn’t the more expensive hotel her friends Isaac and Henry had stayed at after they got married. Beth was routinely disappointed. That’s because she’d misunderstood the difference between literary novelist and Hollywood screenwriter. Even now she was perpetually straining her eyes at the horizon, waiting for our ship to come in, even though I had told her repeatedly: no ship had ever set sail.

As I sat on one of the beds, I could feel how tense I was. My whole body was stiff. Between Keith and dealing with Finch and my fight with Beth that morning, I’d been wound tight all day. Beth had been angry about the weekend away— she hated my friends, hated me doing anything for myself. She’d hurled her favorite insults, so familiar by now that they didn’t really wound— pathetic, failure, weak, spineless, talentless. I’d shot an angry look her way at “talentless.” That one was new, and particularly cruel.

Finch took a deep, noisy breath— dramatic and satisfied— as he sat down on the wide windowsill. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply.

“Put that out!” I jumped up and opened the window. “You can’t smoke in Jonathan’s house. He just renovated the whole thing.”

Finch laughed. “You really do give a shit what these people think, don’t you?”

“Please,” I said. “You’re the one who’s obsessed with ‘these people.’ ”

He pulled a face. “That’s bullshit.”

It was not bullshit. Finch was desperate to work his way into my Vassar group. He’d been trying for years, but they’d consistently and wisely boxed him out. My friends all thought he was insufferable. Even Keith, deep down, but he’d made his own deal with the devil. For my part, I had no choice but to tolerate Finch. He had me over a barrel, and he never let me forget it.

“Jonathan is my friend, and he cares about his house. Stop being such a dick.” I felt that familiar heat rise in my chest. “Put the fucking cigarette out.”

Lately, Finch seemed to be accepting that he was never going to get a seat at our table. And so this thinly veiled hostility had taken the place of his eagerness. The biggest irony was that there were literally thousands of people who would— who did— pay to spend time with Finch. Of course, he didn’t want those people. He wanted my people. The ones he couldn’t have.

“Jesus, take it easy,” Finch grumbled, obediently throwing the cigarette from the window, but without putting it out. “This was supposed to be fun.”

“Fun for who?” I crossed my arms and leaned back against the wall near the door. “What are you even doing here, Finch?”

He was quiet for a minute, considering. Finally, he met my eyes. “I’m here to fire Keith.”

“Knock it off,” I said.

“I’m serious.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, hoping this was just Finch, thinking a messed-up joke was entertaining when it was not. “Keith’s been amazing to you.”

“In some ways, sure.” Finch stared at me, matter-of-factly.

Holy shit. He was serious.

“Please, he made you, Finch.”

This was true. And not even in terms of money. What Keith did was more essential than that. I knew firsthand. It was only thanks to Keith’s relentless encouragement— verging on harassment, really: texts, emails, haranguing over beers— that I’d had the guts to finally send my novel out to agents. It was thanks to Keith that I hadn’t quit writing altogether when I wasn’t accepted into Vassar’s coveted creative writing seminar.

“Do you believe in your writing?” Keith asked me late the night I’d been rejected, as we sat on the floor of my room, getting high. He was squinting through the smoke, pointing a finger at me.

I’d considered the question, trying to ignore the fact that my throat still felt raw from crying. Because I had done that— actually cried when I found out about the rejection. No one had seen me, thank God, but it was still humiliating. Faulkner probably never cried.

“Everyone believes in their own work,” I said languidly as the pot worked its magic.

“No, no— I mean like really, really deep down in the base of your spine,” Keith had said. “Do you know you are a writer?”