had gotten settled into Todd’s bedroom (hunter-green walls, collection of vintage toy soldiers, flat-screen television set), there was a meal waiting for them, wild salmon filets cooked by Jackie’s chef. During dinner, she let them drink wine, a California chardonnay; the evening went by in a blur as Ethan accepted glass after glass from two different servers who had been employed for the evening. Jackie and Todd’s lives swirled around him while Ethan quietly observed: phone calls were accepted, Todd and his mother argued about where they would spend Thanksgiving, Jackie rushed to the kitchen to get a new knife for herself, as hers had a spot on it. Ethan found himself taking small and deliberate bites of his food—never before had he been so worried about talking with his mouth full—as he watched this thrilling world unfold, full of discussions of travel and real estate and parties in exotic locales. Unlike their time in the car, when Jackie had attempted to talk to them as teenagers, here in her own dining room she seemed perfectly content to treat Todd as an adult. Ethan was surprised to hear his friend opining, albeit gruffly, on everything from the quality of Jackie’s latest driver to the relative merits of Aspen versus Vail.
After a dessert of low-calorie raspberry sorbet (Todd told Ethan that Jackie had banned all full-fat products from the household), the boys stumbled back to Todd’s room. Ethan was feeling buzzed—more than buzzed, drunk, really—and he flopped down on the foldout couch that had been prepared for him.
“Don’t crash yet,” Todd said. “Let’s smoke.” The thought of doing anything after this many glasses of wine seemed inconceivable.
“Smoke cigarettes?”
“No, I got some weed.”
Ethan blanched at first, though the idea actually excited him. “Where?”
Todd motioned for him to come down the hall. “Out on the terrace.”
Ethan followed him toward the living room. As he passed the door to Jackie’s bedroom, the light coming from under it made him sad for a moment, as he thought what it must be like to be a single woman of her age; Todd said that though she had received several proposals, in the twelve years she had been divorced, she hadn’t yet met a man whom she wanted to marry.
Todd opened the French doors leading outside. Ethan had taken a brief look at the wraparound terrace earlier in the evening, but now he could really get a sense of the view: from up here, they could see across Central Park to the West Side and all the way to New Jersey.
Todd fired up the pipe and inhaled quickly. He handed it over and Ethan took a sharp, choking hit. He started coughing.
“Go easy, don’t burn your lungs,” Todd said, taking another hit himself. “That’s probably enough for now. Just see how it works for you.”
Todd clearly knew what he was doing, and Ethan realized that he trusted him. As the pot seeped into his consciousness, he had a sudden desire to spill out a litany of secrets, secrets that lay far below the history of his middle-class existence, secrets he had never told anyone: the fact that in his entire seventeen years, he had only kissed a girl once, just a warm, wet peck on the lips during a game of truth or dare at summer camp in the San Juan Islands when he was thirteen—there had been a horrible smooching sound that had made the others giggle, thereby sealing his fear of locking lips with anyone over the next four years. The fact that he had once stolen a pornographic magazine from a bookstore in Palo Alto, a giant megachain that he was later horrified to realize was equipped with surveillance cameras, and that the entire thing was on tape and therefore indelibly seared into the collective memory of the community at large (for six months, he avoided even walking in front of that store). The fact that, during an argument with his mother about something stupid (now he couldn’t even remember what it was), he had told her he wished she were dead, a statement to which Judith Whitley had said nothing, only shaking her head and leaving the room.
He stayed silent as these vignettes went racing through his brain. A cool breeze came from across the park, and Ethan looked out again at the expanse of foliage, the squares of light in the distance, the flickering reflections on the Hudson between the buildings.
“This is amazing,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, it’s good shit.”
“I don’t mean the weed, I mean your whole life. Everything. This apartment. Your mom. It’s out of a dream or something.”
“I don’t know, you get used to it.”
The two gazed out at the view. A paranoia briefly struck Ethan—he was smoking, he was breaking the law, he might become a drug addict!—and then he relaxed. He remembered himself a year ago, where he had been (nowhere, really), living at home, and thought of all he had experienced since then. He was at a school, part of a group of people who were considered in the top one-tenth of one percent of the population (if even that much) in terms of education, opportunities, possibilities. He was invincible; anything could happen this year. And here he was, in actuality, on top of the world.
He started babbling, the words coming out of his mouth without control. “It’s so weird, it’s like you take it all for granted. I can’t even imagine what it would be like. I…well, I guess I would give anything to live like this. Not forever. Just for a little bit. Just to see what it was like. I guess.” He realized he sounded stupid. “I don’t know.”
Todd laughed wryly. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Ethan frowned for a moment, then decided to push from his mind the idea that Todd’s life could be anything less than remarkable. As a set looks far from spectacular when one is actually onstage, Ethan wanted to sit, if only for a little bit longer, in the audience.
After they finished smoking, Todd led Ethan through the dark hallway. His mom had gone to bed and the chef had left for the evening. The two of them brushed their teeth, mint toothpaste masking marijuana, Todd turned off the lights, and they climbed into their respective beds. He couldn’t remember the last time he had hosted an overnight guest; for a moment, his familiar anxieties returned. He felt his heart pounding from the lingering high. There was a glow surrounding Ethan, a light emanating from him. He heard Ethan rustling his sheets, repositioning himself for sleep.
“Ethan?” he said. Todd turned on his side toward the foldout couch, brushing his cheek against the plaid flannel of his pillow-case.
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad we became friends.”
“Me, too,” Ethan said. “G’night.”
“Night.”
If there had been any doubt before, Todd was now sure he was stoned, because as he drifted off to sleep, he imagined himself walking over to Ethan’s bed and climbing in next to him, their bodies intertwined, skin touching skin, electric, thin cotton T-shirts, soft underwear. His eyes opened with a jolt: he was still in his bed, Ethan was on the couch, and nothing had changed.
CHAPTER 5
The next week, Todd finished dinner early and arrived at six o’clock at the Stevenson Art Center, where Ethan was waiting with his sketch pad and board. The studio was empty, as most people were still at dinner. It was already dark, and the room was lit with washed-out fluorescent light.
“Sit over there, near the skeleton,” Ethan instructed him.
Todd sat on a creaky stool in front of an anatomical model that the intermediate class was drawing for Halloween. His right foot was shaking slightly; he tried to steady it against the hard metal of the stool.
Ethan began to sketch Todd. “I’m going to do a few versions,” he said, flipping his pad to a fresh page after several minutes.
He worked diligently, and for a quarter hour, all Todd could hear was the scraping of Ethan’s pencil against the rough paper. He tried to keep still, but the more aware he was of Ethan watching him, the more nervous he became. Keeping a normal expression on his face became an unnatural act. It was like posing for a photograph. If the picture wasn’t taken soon enough, the smile became an act of will, an expression that represented not