When the meal was finished and Freddy had paid, the two moved to the balcony to smoke cigars. Ben thought back to when they were boys and Freddy had stolen one of his father’s cigars for them to smoke after school. When the time came, Freddy said his asthma was acting up, and so he simply watched on as Ben coughed so hard that a blood vessel burst in one of his eyes—the joke around school was that Ben’s eye had gotten its period. In high school, Freddy went on to make a little film based on the event. To everyone’s surprise, the film won first place in a contest, forever setting the course of Freddy’s future. Freddy was all set to move to Hollywood, where he had yet to find work but had locked down an apartment with a Jacuzzi bathtub and a terrace that existed for the sole purpose of drinking outdoors. Ben couldn’t help but compare it to the one bedroom that awaited him in Virginia, which had no dishwasher and no washing machine and was actually just a room in a house. Ben’s father taught eighth-grade science and his mother had quit selling insurance when she fell ill the winter before— the fun money had come from his father’s retirement fund. Freddy’s father, on the other hand, was a heart surgeon in the same hospital where both Ben and Freddy were born. The two met in Hebrew school, where they had quickly established a relationship based on a simple but sturdy arithmetic: Freddy would spoil Ben, and Ben would reciprocate with loyalty and admiration. It had begun with a remote-controlled helicopter and had progressed into their adulthood, where it took the form of, among other things, an iPad and a pair of gold cufflinks. Ben had never worn the cufflinks—he didn’t yet own a suit—but kept them in a velvet box for the day he would need them.

When they finished their cigars, Freddy took out his cell phone and dialed a number. “I’ve a surprise for us,” he said. “You go wait out front.”

Ben did as he was told, nervous for what the surprise might be. The year before, Freddy had bought them both diamond earrings. Neither boy had piercings, and so, after four consecutive shots of tequila, they’d stumbled into a parlor in downtown Wichita so that a girl with an electric pink bob could slide a needle through each of their earlobes. Ben hoped Freddy had planned something more docile this year; the earring had devastated his mother.

Eventually Freddy brought his car around and honked. There were two girls, one in the front seat and one in the back. They smelled of mint gum and expensive perfume.

“What do you think?” Freddy asked.

Ben gave a surreptitious thumbs-up, pleased that the night involved women. If there was one thing he had over Freddy, it was looks. Freddy was redheaded and heavyset and had chicken pox scars on his cheeks; Ben had the look of a Kennedy—square jaw, good hair, boyish smile. Once, while shopping at the Kansas City Plaza, Freddy had held a shirt to Ben’s chest to see how it looked. “Christ, I’d kill for a chin like yours,” he’d said. Perhaps he hadn’t meant to say it out loud because even the skin on his arms turned pink before he’d hurried off to buy the shirt. Neither of them ever mentioned the moment, although Freddy wore the shirt often.