To new friends. The flutter quickens as those words sink in. I haven’t even arrived at the retreat yet, and already the Death Row Club is giving me everything I’ve ached for over the past few months. As we cut our way through the clouds, all I can think is, no one is going to take this away from me.
6NICOLA
I’M HIDING INthe airport bathroom.
Almost a quarter hour after disembarkation, I’m still perched on a toilet in B Concourse, jeans bunched around my ankles, trying to come up with something to say to Greer Woods. I loosen the strings on my sweatshirt and push the hood down. Bracing myself, I click the front-facing camera on my phone. Great. My cheeks are flush with that craggy alcohol glow, the bags under my eyes like newly formed blisters. I wanted to come across as composed, attractive; instead, I bear a distinct resemblance to the homeless woman who shuffles barefoot around Dollar General every Sunday.
The public address system whines into action: “Good afternoon, passengers. This is the pre-boarding announcement for Flight DL395 to Los Angeles. We are now inviting those passengers with small children, and any passengers requiring special assistance, to begin boarding at this time. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready—”
Los Angeles.
Not all that long ago, I’d been dumb enough to believe I might be destined for a flight out west.
I never intended to return home after college. My admission to Cooper Union was supposed to be a one-way ticket to a career as a professional artist. But after I almost failed out during my junior and senior years, I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t destined to break out on the New York art scene. I moved back to my hometown, back into my childhood bedroom, and eventually started teaching at the same elementary school where I’d first picked up a paintbrush. For a while, I maintained my subscription toArtforum, but there were too many articles about my former classmates. Melanie Gardener, who graduated the year ahead of me, had a show at Gladstone reviewed; Justin Billings had an entire feature written about his asinine video collages of morning commutes.
But when Greer arrived in town, I started to believe things could change for me. “When this is all over,” she’d said, “you should come out to California. We can spend a few weeks together, check out some of the galleries.” We assembled playlists during our stakeouts because Greer swore that, without them, the freeways would be unbearable. I found myself looking forward to that trip—to putting my small town in the rearview mirror, dreaming bigger even if it was only temporary. It wasn’t just the idea of being back in a big city that thrilled me; it was the idea of being there withher.
The last person who made me feel that way about my life, about the future, had been Claire.
The creak of the custodian’s cart drags me back to the airport. “Hello?” a woman calls, her chunky shoes shuffling to a halt in front of my stall. “We’re closing the bathroom for cleaning.”
“One sec.” I shove the phone back in my pocket, then slide on an oversized pair of sunglasses.
No more delaying the inevitable.
Zach’s waiting outside. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
“You know you don’t have anything to worry about, right? I promise all the club members are totally normal, or at least as normal as people like us can be. Besides, you’re already friends with me.” He tweaks one of my hoodie drawstrings. “Trust me, I’ll take care of you.”
Trust him. He makes it sound so easy. My phone buzzes. A message from the club administrator:
Downstairs in arrivals. Look for Legacy Consulting, LLC.
I show my screen to Zach, who shakes his head. “Connor’s fucking ridiculous.”
This is the second time he’s mentioned that name. “Who’s Connor?”
“The membership director. He loves all this cloak-and-dagger bullshit. ‘Meet me when the wind blows south by southwest, and the water runs uphill.’ Like, just tell us you’ll be at baggage claim, wearing a corduroy jacket, and we’ll find you.”
Caution doesn’t sound like the worst thing to me, but Zach clearly feels otherwise. The escalator ferries us down to arrivals, and sure enough, standing next to the revolving doors is a man in a brown corduroy jacket holding a sign for Legacy Consulting, LLC. He’s handsome—early forties maybe, with thick dark hair and a wiry frame that either speaks to admirable self-control or a lifetime diet of caffeine and cigarettes. Zach makes a beeline for him.
“Hey, I’d like to schedule a consultation on how to rebrand my restaurant after discovering my dad’s a serial killer. Any ideas? I was thinking a brand-new menu: the Münchausen by Panini, the Unsub Chicken Sub, the Macdonald Triad Triple Decker Sandwich.”
The man—Connor—glares at Zach. “You’re late. You were supposed to be on the twelve-forty-five out of Denver.”
“Missed connection. But it all worked out for the best becausethis one”—he steps aside and pulls me forward—“was traveling on the same flight.”
Connor’s annoyance seems to recede a little when he notices me, but there’s still something hard and impersonal in his stare.
“Connor,” he says, shaking my hand. “How was your flight?”
“Great, thanks.”
He checks the clock by the arrivals board. “We should get going.” The LEGACYCONSULTING, LLC sign is affixed to a clipboard, and as we approach the parking garage, he flips through the other papers underneath. He reminds me a little of Mrs. Walsh from Oliante Elementary. “The clipboard fascist,” Jenny Landry whispered to me, back when we were still friends, as Mrs. Walsh scrutinized her seating chart to make sure not a single student was out of their assigned place.
The temperature outside feels sweltering after being blasted with air-conditioning in the airport. I want to strip off my hoodie, but as families rush by us, en route to their minivans, I know it would be too much of a risk. Instead, I follow Connor as he strides toward the back of the lot. “We charter a shuttle every year,” he says. “To maintain our anonymity, we ask you to be mindful of what you say during the drive. No full names, nothing about our parents.”
