I looked down at my hundred-dollar acrylics, resting on my perfect weekend slacks— Theory, on sale from Saks. In college, Stephanie had sometimes scolded me about being too focused on appearances— expensive things, beautiful people— and maybe I had been a little superficial. But back then I didn’t quite look the way I did now, and all I could ever think was: What a privilege to be above caring about such things. Sometimes I still felt that way. I mean, look at Jonathan— he didn’t care about making money because he didn’t have to.
I focused again on the view out the window. In every direction, trees and more trees, their gnarled trunks and branches full of spectacular leaves crowding out the sun. Lovely, but a little ominous. I put my phone back in my bag.
“We should use the time we have left to, you know, strategize,” Jonathan said. “Derrick and Keith can’t be far behind us.”
“Strategize?” Stephanie scoffed.
When I glanced back, she was sunk low in the back seat, the sleeves of her fashionable suit jacket pushed up, heels kicked off. Her arms were crossed tight in a pretty good impersonation of a sullen child. Stephanie had always been as tall and striking as a supermodel, though, and going natural these days only enhanced her large amber eyes, high cheekbones, and light brown skin. But Stephanie’s beauty had always been of the absurdly unattainable variety: pointless to covet. Though sometimes, I still did.
Jonathan eyed Stephanie in the rearview. “If this is going to work, we really need to be a united front.”
“We’re united, we’re united,” she said. “Keith obviously has to go to rehab. There’s no doubt about that.”
“And we’ll get him to go,” I said, sounding way more confident than I felt. After all, I’d been the one who’d talked Keith into it the last time. I saw the look in his eye when he said it was a one-time-only deal. He’d meant it.
“Wait, what the hell is that?” Stephanie pointed a long finger between us at the left-hand side of the windshield.
Set up on a hill back from the road was an ancient-looking farmhouse that had completely collapsed in on itself. What remained was a hull of splintered boards, broken windows, peeling picket fencing— all of it left there to decompose. Almost as menacing was the run-down building in front, low and rectangular and tilting to the left, like a short stretch of makeshift motel rooms jerry-rigged from plywood and other scrap. People were living there, too, from the looks of it: some kind of light inside, a door slightly ajar. There were clothes strewn about outside and a big pile of garbage at one end— bottles, cans, food containers.
As we passed, I caught sight of a large bonfire around back. Two thin, hunched figures stood nearby in the glow.
“I can’t believe people are living there,” I said. “I mean— that’s so sad.”
Jonathan shrugged. “There are a lot of opioids up here, and not everyone has friends like us to swoop in. Or the means to pay for rehab. Keith doesn’t have the means to pay for rehab.”
“I’ve got to be honest, Jonathan, this is less charming than I pictured,” Stephanie said. “Kind of like a horror movie, and you know the Black friend always dies first in those.”
“No one’s dying,” I said. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Um, not really joking,” she went on. “Remind me again, Jonathan, why you bought a place here, when you could have used your piles of money to buy one, I don’t know, literally anywhere else?”
“Funny, Maeve asked the same thing— more than once.” He shot a look in my direction.
“Hey, I was only trying to help,” I said, lifting my hands. “I wanted to make sure you’d thought it through, that’s all. It is kind of off the beaten path up here.” And that was absolutely true.
“Peter and I talked about Montauk, but that’s always such a scene.”
“So you opted for meth alley instead?” Stephanie muttered.
“Our friends, Justin and Bill, just bought a house a few towns over. You know, they own that restaurant on Perry Street?” When Jonathan glanced over, I nodded. But I’d never heard Jonathan mention a Justin or a Bill before. “Anyway, they’ve been married forever.”
They were probably more Peter’s friends. It wasn’t that Jonathan was antisocial, but compared to life-of-the-party Peter, with his wash-board abs and irresistible surfer charm, everyone was an introvert.
The trees were giving way to houses now that we were approaching town, set close together and on the small side, but at least not falling down. There was a Cumberland Farms gas station up on the right. As we slowed to a stop at a red light in front, a wiry old white guy standing at the pumps wearing a baseball hat and a long-sleeved Gatorade T-shirt glared menacingly at our car. When we met eyes, I looked away.