TALK GIRL, TALK BOY: PART ONE

I talked to Bradley Pirato, my high school crush, last month over dinner in Pasadena.

THE KILLER

BRADLEY PIRATO: Jack Price was a senior when I was a freshman at Verona. You didn’t know him, Ottessa, because he graduated the year before you started. A few years ago I heard he was on house arrest for forging Basquiat paintings.

OTTESSA MOSHFEGH: So they weren’t very good?

BP: They were garbage. He wasn’t an artist and he couldn’t paint for shit.

OM: Were you friends? Was he part of the smoking bench crew?

BP: No, I don’t think he was. I remember him as a Brooks Brothers sweater vest kind of dude.

OM: Oh, so he was spoiled, you’re saying.

BP: There was this whole thing with his dad, wait, what was that about? They weren't speaking to each other because his dad had cut him out of his will. That’s right. His dad disinherited him.

OM: Why?

BP: I don’t know, because Jack was an asshole, I guess?

OM: Did you think so?

BP: Remember when I told you about the sweater vest just now?

OM: Go on.

BP: So Jack was broke. And his wife had just had a baby. She was Bosnian. This is years later. Years and years after we all graduated. He was living, I don’t know, in some shit town somewhere.

OM: Wait, what about the sweater vest?

BP: He was disinherited. He had no more sweater vests.