Everything Changes

thick, obedient, and often suspiciously similar to Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest style, although she would never admit to such pedestrian influences. I stand between these two attractive people as something of an oddity, like the guy taking the light readings at a photo shoot, miraculously connected to both of them, conspicuously average; the man in the middle.
    Jed and I met in Columbia and became roommates after we graduated, in a run-down junior four on 108th and Amsterdam. At the time, he was working as an analyst at Merrill Lynch and I was writing long, boring press releases full of disclaimers for a PR firm specializing in pharmaceuticals. Then Jed quit his job to join a hedge fund investing in Internet start-ups and, like everyone else except me, became a millionaire on stock options by the year 2000. By the time the bubble had burst, he’d already bought the brownstone, inviting me to move in with him, and sold enough stock before the fall to bank a healthy few million to boot. For a while he talked about going back to work in the financial sector or maybe starting his own hedge fund, but then our buddy Rael got killed and Jed pretty much forgot about all that, and announced that he was going to just stay home and watch television for a while. That was almost two years ago, and as far as I can tell, he seems to have found his true calling. The nudity is more of a hobby.
    Rael, my best friend since the third grade, lost control of his BMW on his way home from a night of gambling in Atlantic City. The car swerved up an embankment on the Garden State Parkway and crashed through the woods before flipping over into a gully. It was two in the morning and the parkway was empty when it happened, so it took a while for help to show up, and by then he was dead. I doubt they could have saved him anyway, since his internal organs were pretty much crushed on impact when he was impaled on the steering wheel. It would be comforting to think he died instantly, but it actually took a while. I know, because I was sitting next to him.
    “Did we really have an earthquake?” Hope says, sounding like a little girl as she peers out at Eighty-fifth and Broadway. Her whine is gone, and I love her again.
    “So it would seem,” Jed says.
    He turns the television to one of the local channels while we gaze out the window, considering the possibility of terrorist actions. Since 9/11, we take nothing for granted. The din of the car alarms is starting to lessen, and a few hardy souls have ventured out onto the street to assess the situation. They’re showing an old Clint Eastwood film on channel 55—urban Clint, as opposed to grizzled Western Clint—and after another minute, the crawl appears at the bottom of the screen confirming that yes, in fact, we did have a minor earthquake. No injuries or damages have been reported.
    “Since when does Manhattan have earthquakes?” Hope says in a tone that suggests she’s inclined to write a letter to someone’s supervisor about this. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I don’t recall there ever being one before.”
    “Maybe not on the East Side,” Jed says. “Here in the West, we get them all the time.” He never misses a chance to needle Hope about her privileged roots. “Teach you to go slumming.” He winks at me, a quick, effortless wink that I have fruitlessly tried to cultivate from time to time. My facial muscles apparently lack the required flexibility, and my cheek always manages to get dragged into the fray, lending the gesture a ticlike quality guaranteed not to impress.
    Hope looks down her perfect nose at Jed. “You are an ass,” she declares sincerely.
    “No,” he says, standing up briefly to bend over and flash her some moon. “This is an ass.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” she squeals exasperatedly, turning to me like it’s my fault and flashing me her what-lovely-friends-you-have smirk. Her genteel origins did not prepare her for guys like Jed, or me for that matter, and I have to say that she’s adjusted rather admirably in the name of love. “Let’s go back to bed,” I say, taking her hand. Jed plops back down on the couch, the leather farting as it scrapes against his skin, or else he’s actually let one rip, which would hardly be out of character. We won’t wait around to find out. He flips on the television, surfing aimlessly through the vast desert of late-night programming. “Night, Jed,” I call to him from the stairs, but he’s already