All the while Jes sang the lyrics to “Walking on Broken Glass,” looping it louder and louder, over herself, over and over again and again, until cops materialized in the street below us, lights flashing, torches beaming. We were forced to disperse. Max and I ran, giggling hysterically, shrieking ravenously, the entire way. On 22nd Street, we spied an unlocked roof door, held ajar with a cinder block. We jumped five feet from the side of the High Line, skinning our knees as we landed, tumbling down the stairwell and bursting past the surprised doorman. We didn’t stop running until we got to the Half King on the next block.

I ordered us two beers at the bar while Max looked for a table where she could smoke. When I came back outside, she was leaning against the back window of someone’s glossy chauffeured Tahoe and giggling.

“Hey, sweetie, I’m grabbing a ride uptown,” she said, running into the patio area. “Kim and Thurston are having a last-minute thing for Patti,” she whispered. “You know how famous people can be. I’ll call if it’s chill. Anyway—this was a blast.” She kissed my cheek and bolted.

I drank both beers at the bar, then went home and watched my phone as it didn’t ring.

After that I never asked Max to join me for anything ever again.

For the next decade we lived less than a mile apart but didn’t hang out much: She was busy with the drama of her life, acting, photography, socializing with actors and photographers, and I was busy with both my work and the surprisingly complicated process of becoming a person who didn’t think someone like Max had all the answers. We ran into each other occasionally, at parties both downtown and uptown, and she always pretended to be happy to see me, and I pretended back. She got herself invited to Pine City and went three summers in a row—a fact that made me so insanely jealous I swore never to acknowledge it to her face. She made an entire, thriving career out of the art of being herself, a self that, though it was given to her, though it was deposited via umbilical cord, is still its own medium, its own challenge. It’s no small thing to be a lifestyle artist. It is a complex and difficult con.