when we were drunk and my Flip cam was rolling. For a moment I saw it like a scene from a horror movie: Edie in her undies turning around just in time to see Alex raise the gun. I gave my head a little shake and began exchanging pleasantries. This must be what it’s like to be a sociopath.
“I’m so glad you could be convinced to come out tonight,” I said. “It’s been way too long. How’s everything?”
“Yeah, this was definitely unexpected. I’m good.”
We caught up politely: Alex was still working for the same company, still happily married, now looking to buy a home in Tarrytown. The waiter appeared and Alex began ordering a glass of wine, but I convinced him to make it a bottle. I’ve found it’s not hard to hide the fact that I don’t drink a single sip of my “half.”
I flashed back to us as buddies, hanging out on a cold winter night, drinking cocoa with schnapps and playing Before and After, a stupid word game we made up that involved easing band names into unrelated portmanteaus. Radioheadphones. Ace of Base-jumping. Once he and I had almost died of laughter over increasingly elaborate plans to open Destiny’s Child’s Pose, a yoga studio that played early-naughts R&B.
“Well, I’m at Sir magazine,” I volunteered.
“It’s been a while now, right?”
“Five years!” I nodded, eyebrows high. “They just switched us to a new platform that makes more interviews and photos and original documents and stuff available to the reader, so it’s like figuring out the whole fact-checking ethos anew.”
“That’s great. That’s really great.” Now he did the deliberate head bob. “Always good when it’s dynamic.”
The wine appeared and Alex had to do the dog and pony show, swirling, sniffing, tasting, approving.
“You’re in Cobble Hill?” he asked.
“Fort Greene, and yep, also going on five years now! It’s a New York City miracle. I’ve got the nicest landlord, so I just haven’t seen a reason to leave. He owns this woo-woo place called Healing Hands Reiki on the ground floor and lives right above it, so I’m his only tenant.” Aggressive hairpin turn: “We’ve come a long way from Bushwick.”
“Yeah, the lofts were pretty shitty, huh? Weird to think about us living there.”
“I didn’t. I knew better.”
He chewed his bread, smiling. “That’s right. But we were only there, what? A little less than two years. We had some good times in that loft.”
“Hell, yeah, we did.”
“On track to be the best years of my life, weirdly. I still can’t believe—” His eyes popped up and the waiter leaned in to set down our food. Goddamn waiters and their impeccably bad timing. Alex picked up his fork and got quiet again.
How had Kevin put it, back when this all began? “Figure out what really went on that night.” Alex had answers, but getting them was going to take more work than I thought.
“Do you still play guitar at all?” I asked between bites.
He shrugged. “Not really. I used to play when I got home from work sometimes, but lately I’ve just been too tired.”
“You used to be really good,” I said lamely.
“A couple guys at work and I keep talking about starting a band together. Jam out like a bunch of old losers. Hard to actually make it happen, though.”
I poured him more wine and then looked back down at my noodles.
“Fleetwood Mac and Cheese,” I said.
“Oh my god.” He nodded his approval. “Well played, Bach. Okay. Um…Aimee Mann-agement funds.”
“Oh my god, we’re so old. You never would have come up with that back in the day.” We both cracked up, and just like that, ten years between us splintered apart.
“I have to tell you, seeing you and Sarah in the flesh in the span of a week is pretty surreal,” I said.
“Do we look old to you?”
“Well, now I realize how old I’ve gotten.”
Alex laughed. “You look the same! Do I really look old now?”
“Oh, sir, I think you dropped your fishing pole!” I mimed handing something back to him; he played along. “But no, none of us looks old. I guess it’s more that twenty-three seems absurdly young now. I’ve been looking at old photos and…god, we were babies. You know what I realized?”
“What’s that?”
“Remember Edie’s boyfriend, Greg? That older architect she dated right before you?”
“Sure.” He kept chewing, listening attentively. No particular ire toward the man she’d left for Alex.
“He was our age, like now, when he started dating Edie, who was twenty-three. Can you imagine?”