“Be quiet, Finch,” Derrick said from the driver’s seat, keeping his attention on the road.
“We’re tired, Finch,” Jonathan said. “We are all exhausted.”
Exhausted by me. By this. By the nice but still random, probably high girl I’d invited to join our private party. By the asshole client I’d let tag along. By me and all my bullshit. Fair enough. I was tired of me, too.
“Do you have any food at your house, Jonathan?” Stephanie asked.
“I could make something for all of you! I’m a great cook!” Crystal called out, gripping Stephanie’s shoulder in an overfamiliar way. “I’d just need some garlic, a tomato, a few other spices and some chilies or even some chili flakes. I can make this delicious penne arrabiata.”
“Sounds great,” Maeve said politely. Maeve would probably be polite to my friends from Staten Island, too, right up until they blew her face away.
It was insane that I’d allowed myself to get mixed up with them. But it had seemed so logical at the time. I could still remember the way Frank’s heavy Scotch tumbler had felt in my one hand, the fat cigar gripped in the other. We’d been standing on his Todt Hill patio, surveying the Manhattan skyline and the huge, gaudy stone houses in every direction. Frank had been hilariously talking casual shit about his various neighbors for at least an hour, and I’d been loving every crazy second of it.
“But, you know, most of them are good people,” he’d said. “Nonjudgmental.”
Frank Gardello was a big Italian man with a curvy, blond, heavily Botoxed wife named Griselda. Frank had a guy who drove him around in a huge Cadillac Escalade to “business meetings,” the meaning of which was obvious. I’d liked Frank the second I met him at the gallery, though— coming in off the street, browsing for art like Griselda probably browsed at Prada. After twelve minutes, they’d bought a $26,000 Luca Baglio painting.
“Nonjudgmental is good,” I’d said that evening on Frank’s deck, and I’d meant it.
“That’s what I like about you,” he’d said. “People in all those other fucking galleries treat us like garbage. All of them except you. That was a big deal to Griselda. Hope it goes without saying: you ever need anything, you let me know.”
No rational person would have taken Frank Gardello up on this offer. But I’d been flying pretty high that night on Frank’s porch, expensive Scotch on my tongue, the sinking sun setting the sky aflame. And everything had felt like a sign.
“Well,” I’d said, “there is one thing.”
Eighty thousand dollars— enough to pay back the Serpentine Gallery and get Finch’s show up and running. Of course, one thing had led to another, and pretty soon the $80,000 had disappeared, some out the door to keep the lights on, and then there was Jace, who’d been fronting me for months. I couldn’t have him cutting me off for good.
For a while, I even thought— after one glass of Scotch and one painting on his wall— that Frank and I were close enough that he might overlook the debt. That’s what too much Oxy will do— make you believe fucked-up shit that’ll get you killed.
One day late on my first payment, and Frank had already passed me off to his people, the ones texting me now. People for whom I was nothing more than a job that needed to get done.
“This house is so fancy,” Crystal said to me once we were inside Jonathan’s, spinning around the living room, grinning. I felt sad for her. And also for me. “But cozy, too.”
“It is,” I said, trying to smile. I couldn’t really.
Crystal was in worse shape than I’d noticed in the dim bar. Her skin had a grayish tinge, and her bare legs were covered with small bruises. Like an overripe banana rocketing toward rotten. She smiled back at me warmly, though, as she moved on to chat with Stephanie. You could see in Crystal’s smile the girl she used to be. I wondered whether, if you looked hard enough, you could still see me.
Stephanie smiled at Crystal stiffly, then shot a look my way. Stephanie wasn’t nearly as polite as Maeve, especially when she was pissed. And she was pretty obviously pissed at me. What the hell was I— wait, was I actually surprised that I’d brought some random girl home to Jonathan’s house during his bachelor party so that I could use with her? After everything else I’d done, this was the surprising thing?
“Hello?” Jonathan snapped his fingers close to my face. “Keith, are you in there? Who is she?”