I flipped through the cash on the counter like a drug dealer, the uneven bills moving through my hands—twenties, tens, fives, singles. All the money I’d accumulated throughout my time in New York. Every cashed Brit & Ash paycheck, every dollar I found walking Alphabet City, every penny I didn’t include as a tip to the barista. It was an old life’s habit I couldn’t quite quit. My father kept all his money in three places: a box with a four-digit lock in the ceiling above the kitchen pantry, my parents’ horsehair mattress (which they stuffed themselves after each of Rudolph’s clippings, way before you could buy the same thing for a paltry two hundred thousand dollars), and in a cutout under the armchair in the living room. His entire life’s savings was scattered around our home, as he was always suspicious the government would somehow take it or tax it if he put it in a bank. A different version of Douglas Walker’s account in the Seychelles, honestly.

I parsed out one thousand dollars and packed it into Fyodor’s envelope—a sad goodbye to the only person I ever invited over—then I put the rest back into its pouch and stuffed it into the New Yorker tote until it sunk below the layers of underwear—the sexy lingerie, the comfortable lace, the period panties—and hit the bottom.

For me, this wasn’t a ruse to get out of taxes or keep the “government’s sticky fingers” out of my pocket. This money was a safety net. A way out. Just in case I needed one.

As the Uber approached Graham’s apartment—well, our apartment now, I guess—Reed was standing outside, smoking a cigarette carelessly close to the building and talking to Danny, who seemed less than intrigued. I rolled down my back seat window, just an inch, and could hear him explaining, “They are moving quite fast, but, I mean, I guess when you know you know...”

I recognized Reed immediately. We’d never met before—as far as he was concerned—but his gruff face was smiling on too many photos around Graham’s apartment for me to not know, in detail, what he looked like. I’d had his first-notice features memorized for a while—his thick eyebrows, blue eyes, quaffed brown hair—but I also knew the less noticeable parts. The cowlick in the back right of his head, the dimple that shows up on his chin if he gains five pounds, the worry lines on his forehead that seem to be deeper than his age would require. He didn’t look unlike Graham, they were almost interchangeable if you saw them separately, but they had bitterly different personalities. Where Graham’s general ease and quick humor softened his edges, made everyone fall in love with him as quickly as I seemed to, Reed’s arrogance and white-man-failing-up confidence only served to sharpen his.