A FEW MONTHS HAD PASSED SINCE I RECEIVED A letter telling me not to contact Michael. But in November 2002, I came to Los Angeles to meet with the producer Marc Schaffel in order to discuss one of my projects. Around that time, in spite of the letter, I had arranged for Michael to receive a Bambi Award for “Pop Artist of the Millennium” in Germany, and Marc was creating a video montage for the song “What More Can I Give.” I knew that Michael would be leaving soon for Europe, so I called him and said, “Michael, I’m in L.A. I’d love to come see you.” He invited me to Neverland, where I still had a bedroom and an office filled with clothes and papers and God knows what else.

   It had been a while since I’d seen Michael and I was looking forward to the visit, but I’d brought with me the letter I’d received from Brian Wolf, and it was burning a hole in my pocket. After I arrived at Neverland and was escorted to the library, Michael entered the room and we gave each other a big hug. We were both happy. Michael was enjoying some downtime. He seemed clear and relaxed, and I hoped that the paranoia and anger that had surrounded the release of Invincible were at last behind him.

   Michael thanked me for arranging the Bambi, and after we’d caught up on each other’s life, I got to what was, for me, the elephant in the room.

   “I have to be honest with you. I’m really upset and disappointed about something. Why would you send me this letter?” I handed it to him. He read it. As he read, his eyes widened.

   “Frank, I didn’t send you this letter,” he said matter-of-factly. If I had any suspicion that he was feigning ignorance, it was dispelled by what he did next. He picked up the phone and called Karen.

   “Why would anyone send a letter to Frank without my permission?” he asked. “Have Brian Wolf call me immediately.”

   Karen hadn’t been cc’d on the letter. This was the first she was hearing of it, but she was Michael’s central contact—the person he called whenever he wanted something to happen immediately. Michael was fuming. He was clearly telling the truth: he had never seen the letter before. Phone still in hand, he said, “Do your parents know about this?”

   “Yeah, I told them.”

   He immediately called my father and said, “I had no idea this letter went out to Frank. I didn’t authorize this, and I’m really sorry it happened.”

   Ever since I’d received the letter, I hadn’t known where I stood with Michael. Now, after seeing his reaction, I gave a huge sigh of relief. We were back to normal. Still, it was clearer to me than ever that I had made some powerful enemies in the organization who were gunning for me, and while this was apparent to Michael, too, he wasn’t about to fire anyone over it. Sure, I thought the letter was grounds for dismissal, but over the years there had been plenty of things I’d thought he should do, and if my past experiences had taught me anything at all, it was that Michael made his own decisions. So I took a deep breath and let the matter go.

   This proved easier to do than I expected because I was dying to see the new baby, Blanket: I couldn’t believe he was already eight months old. Michael led me to the nursery, the same nursery that Prince and Paris had used before they moved to their own room on the same floor. Blanket was sleeping, and as Michael and I looked in on him, I could see that he was just as adorable as both Prince and Paris had been at that age. As I glanced over at Michael, the look I saw on his face made it apparent that the eight months since Blanket’s birth had done little to lessen his enthusiasm for fatherhood.

   Back in the library, Michael casually mentioned two people who, unbeknownst to us, would soon cause him untold damage. The first was a man named Martin Bashir, who, as Michael told me that day, was filming a documentary about him. Michael’s friend Uri Geller, a psychic who was famous for his ability to bend spoons with his mind, had proposed the idea to Michael, telling him that doing an interview with an esteemed journalist like Bashir would help people understand him, and thereby revolutionize his image. Michael was particularly impressed when Uri told him that Princess Diana had done an interview with Bashir.

   In the years to come, numerous people, including myself, would question every aspect of Michael’s decision to participate in Martin Bashir’s documentary. Truthfully, I don’t know the exact conversations that convinced Michael to go ahead with the documentary, but based on how Michael spoke about it with me, I imagine Uri and Bashir appealed to his ego, saying, “Michael, look at all these other people who’ve been interviewed. You’re the King of Pop. The world knows your music. They should get to know you. Your life is fascinating and enlightening.” Skeptical though he may have been, that sort of appeal would have had an effect on him. In addition, it’s not hard for me to see Michael hoping that the documentary would put an end to the “Wacko Jacko” press that had plagued him for so long. After all, I can imagine him thinking, people had responded so well to the self-revealing speech he delivered at Oxford University; perhaps by allowing himself to open up again, a wider audience would see and understand who he really was.

   “Are you sure about this?” I asked him, not even trying to hide my unease.

   Michael was used to my cautiousness.

   “Yes, Frank,” he said. “I have everything under control. He can’t release anything without my approval.” Hearing these words made me feel somewhat reassured. He’d given Bashir, who would be accompanying him to the Bambi Awards, a lot of access, but at least Michael would be able to approve the final product. After all, if he himself had final say, how could he be misrepresented?

   “Frank, do you know who you just missed?” Michael asked, pulling me away from my doubts about Bashir’s intentions. “Gavin was up at the ranch a couple of days ago.”

   The Gavin he was referring to was someone I hadn’t thought about in a while, which was probably for the best. In 2000, when Gavin Arvizo was ten, he was diagnosed with cancer. Michael had heard of his case and arranged a blood drive for him. In response, Gavin voiced his wish to meet Michael, so Michael invited him to Neverland on several occasions that year. At the time the boy walked with crutches and was weak from chemotherapy. Michael tried to help him by giving him affirmations to say every day. He encouraged him to fight his cancer, promising him more visits to the ranch if he got well enough to handle the travel. In addition to the moral support that Michael provided, he also gave financial support to Gavin and his family.

   Gavin was only one of many children Michael tried to help, and while most of the kids’ parents were extremely kind and thankful for his efforts, Gavin’s parents had given me the creeps from day one. Initially I couldn’t put my finger on anything specific; it was just a gut feeling. Then, however, on one of the family’s first visits, David, the father, asked me for money to buy a car. Though they’d only been to Neverland a couple of times, Michael had already done a lot for the family, and I knew that handing out cash was a very tricky business.

   “We’re not going to give you money,” I said, “but I’ll talk to Michael about whether there’s an extra car we can lend you.” As it turned out, we actually found one—Michael gave the family a beatup truck that wasn’t being used. But the very fact that I had had such an exchange with David was a big red flag. After all that Michael had gone through with the Chandler family, I was always wary of families wanting to exploit him.

   The next year, 2001, Michael had been busy with Invincible, and as a result, he had kept his distance from the Arvizo family. When we were working on the album in New York, Gavin went to considerable lengths to reach Michael, calling me, calling security, and persisting until Michael finally took the call. We put the phone on speaker, and as Michael and Gavin talked, we could hear the mother whispering in the background.

   “Tell him we want to see him,” she hissed. “Say ‘You’re our family. We miss our daddy.’” Gavin parroted back the lines his mother fed him.

   At the time I reiterated my anxieties about the Arvizos, telling Michael in no uncertain terms, “I don’t want to have anything to do with this family.”

   Michael agreed with me but felt bad for Gavin and his siblings. “Be nice,” he responded with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s so sad. Parents ruin everything. Poor Gavin’s an innocent kid.” Given his experience with Jordy Chandler, Michael and I were both wary about the dangers that continued contact with a family like this posed for him. But at the same time Gavin was a safe distance away, and Michael had a hard time refusing to take a phone call from a boy who claimed to love and need him. He didn’t see what harm could come of it.

   Throughout 2001 and 2002, I hadn’t heard Gavin’s name mentioned, and as far as I could tell, Michael hadn’t seen the family again—until now. When I heard that Gavin, who was now thirteen, had recently been at the ranch, my skepticism instantly came flooding back.

   “So I didn’t miss much, then,” I said.

   “Come on, Frank,” Michael said, echoing his words from two years earlier. “He’s a sweet boy. Don’t blame Gavin for the faults of his parents.”

   “Yeah, you’re right,” I said begrudgingly. I agreed with him in principle, but Jordy, too, had been a victim of a parent’s ulterior motives. The similarity wasn’t lost on me. In an attempt to convince me of Gavin’s good intentions, Michael explained that the boy had even done an interview with him for Bashir in which he told the camera how much Michael had helped him.

   “Great,” I said, genuinely pleased by Michael’s words.

   “Everyone should know how much you help people all over the world.” Wary as I was about the Arvizos in general, the videotape appearance sounded okay to me, since again Michael had approval over the final product. Since Michael had been so supportive of Gavin and his family, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with Gavin saying so on camera. If Michael had liked what he heard, what harm could it do?

   Famous last words.

   Before Michael left for the Bambis in Germany, he was due to make a court appearance to deal with Marcel Avram’s charges regarding the millennium concerts. As so often happened, Michael didn’t sleep at all the night before his appearance. The next morning he was a mess—unshaven, his hair disheveled. He walked from the car to the courtroom wearing tape over his nose. The tape helped him breathe, but it wouldn’t have been most people’s choice for what would inevitably be a much-photographed few minutes in the public eye.

   The media accounts that immediately followed the appearance focused on Michael’s appearance. Despite the fact that Michael had been open for years about his struggles with vitiligo, journalists speculated that he was trying to be white, and then, taking this kind of offensiveness to a new low, they also made the ridiculous claim that his nose was falling off from excessive plastic surgery.

   This wasn’t the first time that the press had reacted so dramatically to Michael’s appearance. Maybe it was because I saw him so frequently, but strange as it may seem to some people, to me he looked normal. His progressively lightening skin color was not mysterious to me, and it shouldn’t have been to anyone else. This was an issue he’d addressed numerous times, but somehow the media still had not gotten it, or they simply didn’t believe it. As for his plastic surgeries, most of them had been performed before I started working for him, and I never paid much attention to what happened after that. We never talked about the surgeries—not because the subject was forbidden but because he never brought it up, and I accepted Michael as he was. If he wanted to make changes, that was up to him. I imagine that what was ultimately behind it all was his damaging childhood. Michael often mentioned his father making fun of him for having a big nose when he was a kid. I thought Michael was perfectly good-looking before he changed his face, but I believe that when he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see what everyone else saw. Now his nose was smaller, but it still looked big to him. But his appearance wasn’t his focus during our time together, so even if he did have a distorted perception of himself, it didn’t dominate his thoughts and energy. It didn’t represent a broader disconnect with self-perception and reality. Truth be told, I dismissed the surgeries as a rather typical Hollywood practice. If he went too far by some people’s standards, well, that was par for Michael’s course.

   Maybe I was too close to the situation, and it was hard to have perspective, but when I’d watch Michael struggle with his body image, it was hard not to have sympathy for what he was going through. My focus was on helping Michael through the negative reporting in the media. He hated the dumb, even cruel stories the tabloids made up about him. He liked his nose, and as far as his appearance at the Avram-case hearing was concerned, that people would actually say in all seriousness that his nose was about to fall off was absurd.

   “Why are they giving me such a hard time?” he said. “See, Frank? See what they do to me? If it were anyone else, this would be perfectly normal. You can buy these strips at any pharmacy. They help me breathe. If it were anyone else, people wouldn’t say a word, but they’re always trying to find something wrong with me.” He was right, of course, but that wasn’t going to stop the tabloids from speculating about the oddity behind his wearing a nasal strip to court. And in spite of the media’s comments, he kept wearing them. When it came down to it, he wasn’t going to change his behavior just because he was mocked for it.

   The next day, before they left for Germany, Michael introduced me to Martin Bashir. I looked him right in the eye and shook his hand firmly, as I do when I meet people. His handshake was weak —never a good sign. And as I looked deeply into his eyes, it seemed to me that he kind of looked away.

   “So I heard you’re doing an interview. Tell me about it,” I said. “It’s going to be great,” Bashir said. “We’re going to show Michael in the best light.” He was perfectly polite, but somehow I didn’t trust him. There was no way that I could foresee, however, the devastation his so-called documentary would cause Michael, nor that my own reputation would be threatened in the process. Though he was leaving for Germany, Michael encouraged me to stay at the ranch until his return. That sounded nice. I was still meeting with Marc Schaffel, who was in relatively nearby Calabasas, so Neverland was a perfect base for me.

   Shortly after Michael’s departure, a video from Germany appeared on the news. It showed Michael dangling baby Blanket over the balcony of a hotel room. Instantly I was fixated on the screen, my jaw dropping open in shock. I could see the headlines forming before my eyes, and the only thought going through my mind was This is not going to be good.

   I tried to imagine the context of the video. The fans had wanted to see Blanket, so Michael complied with their wish and held the baby out to them. He lifted the baby over the balcony edge to give them a better view. When Blanket kicked his little feet, Michael drew him back over the rail, maintaining, I was sure, a firm grip on him, as he always did. He would never drop him, not inside the hotel room, much less outside on the balcony. He would never do anything to harm his children or put them in danger. Michael had been communicating with his fans from hotel balconies for years and years. To him, it was perfectly natural to share his beloved new son with them.

   At the same time I instantly saw how careless and dangerous Michael’s behavior was. It was foolish to hold a baby at such a height, even with a firm grip. If Michael had seemed unhinged when he was riding a double-decker bus around the Sony building or when he’d worn “tape” on his nose, now he appeared to have gone off his rocker entirely by putting his baby son at risk.

   From the outside, things looked bad. This was a serious lapse in judgment, and coming as it did on the heels of the speculation about his physical appearance, people around the world started to seriously doubt his sanity. I knew better than anyone that Michael was not crazy—eccentric yes, but certainly not crazy. But the truth of his mental state didn’t matter. What mattered was how that moment on the balcony would be perceived, and what began as a lapse in judgment quickly turned into a full-fledged tabloid scandal. Like most of Michael’s mistakes, this one was caught on camera and recycled for judgment a hundred million times. Now instead of focusing just on his nose, people were focusing on whether he was fit to be a father.

   There is no doubt that Michael did a lot of good in the world, and although people were aware of this, it was still difficult for them to reconcile his generosity and philanthropy with the rest of his public persona. This contradiction was on full display the next night when Michael accepted his Bambi Award, and Marc Schaffel’s video of “What More Can I Give” premiered. Taken by itself, it should have been an emotional, dramatic moment in the long career of a talented musician, but occurring right after the Blanket incident, it didn’t make any sense. Those two events juxtaposed, with elemental force, the conflicting images of Michael that the public was struggling to reconcile: on the one hand, the strange-looking, unpredictable man who kept his children’s faces covered and recklessly dangled one over the balcony of a hotel; and on the other, the musical genius who sought to use his work for the benefit of all of humanity. People loved the second Michael, but for some reason they felt compelled to assume the worst about the first. After Michael and the kids came home from their trip, we had dinner, put the kids to bed, and talked about the trip. Michael had issued a statement saying that the dangling episode was a “terrible mistake,” and he had gotten “caught up in the excitement of the moment,” but that he would never “intentionally endanger the lives of [his] children.” He said much the same to me, but with a slightly defensive tone.

   “The fans wanted to see the baby,” he said. “I showed them. I had a firm grip. I wouldn’t ever put my child in danger.” Period. End of discussion.

   But of course, just because it was over for Michael didn’t mean it was over for everyone else. For many people, the damage had been done.

   Soon after his return from Germany, Michael had another court date for his ongoing lawsuit with Marcel Avram. His last court date had been followed with a round of press regarding his appearance. Then there was the hotel incident with Blanket. And now, Michael skipped a court date claiming he was suffering from a spider bite on his leg. There was much speculation in the press as to whether this spider bite was real. In truth, Michael had checked himself into the hospital to receive nutrients and vitamins by IV, as he sometimes did. In the middle of the night, he’d woken up to go to the bathroom. Forgetting where he was and that he was still hooked up to IVs, he stood up. The needles tore out of his leg. By way of explaining his absence in court, he showed his injured leg to the judge and made up the story of the spider bite. The judge looked at it and didn’t say anything. He probably knew it wasn’t a spider bite but, judiciously, decided to let it go.

  

   DESPITE THE MEDIA CIRCUS UNLEASHED BY THE HOTEL incident with Blanket, Christmas 2002 at Neverland was a great one. My family was there, as were Omer Bhatti and his family, a family from Germany whom Michael had befriended, even Dr. Farshchian and his family. We all loved big Christmases with lots of food and presents and kids running around.

   For years we had the same Christmas ritual. In the months leading up to the holiday, Michael and I always shopped for the gifts together, sometimes enlisting Karen to help find what we had in mind. We stored everything we’d purchased in the firehouse. (Because of Neverland’s size and isolation, insurance regulations or California state law required that it have its own fire department on the premises, with a small fire truck boasting a Neverland logo and full-time firemen.) The staff would wrap all the presents, labeling each with its contents. Then, on Christmas Eve, Michael and I would write names on the presents and put them under the tree in preparation for the morning. On Christmas Day, we all slept in, knowing that we wouldn’t open the presents right away. Because my father always had to work on Christmas Eve, present opening never began until his flight from the East Coast arrived. Everyone got dressed up … and then waited. Prince and Paris were very patient, not only because they were used to the ritual, but also because their father had worked hard to instill in them a sense of gratitude and respect. When my father arrived, Michael took his place beside the tree, handing out every gift, Santa style.

   A few days after New Year’s Eve, when everyone was gone, Michael and I spent the day watching movies and doing some work in his office. In the late afternoon we decided to go down to the wine cellar, which was our hideout—it was cozy and secreted away below the game room. The door looked like part of the wall, so you had to know where it was in order to find it.

   Down in the cellar, we opened a bottle of white wine. I love my red wine, but Michael preferred white. That afternoon Michael and I spoke about the future, and what our goals for this next year were going to be. From the start, his words were bold and ambitious, but I could tell that he meant them.

   “I’m going to get myself out of this financial mess that everyone has made of my life,” he stated.

   This was the first time Michael had openly admitted to me or, as far as I knew, anyone, that he was in financial trouble. The fact that he was finally willing to face the music was astounding. “Yes, it’s their fault,” I replied. “But it’s your fault, too, for allowing it to happen.”

   “I needed to focus on being creative,” he said, with a hint of defensiveness in his voice. “You know, when I made Off the Wall and Thriller, I was the one who signed every single check that went out to anyone. Everything ran smoothly back then.”

   “What changed?” I asked, honestly wanting to know. “Why did you start letting other people handle your money?”

   “It got too big. It was too much for me to handle,” he said. While it may seem obvious, this admission was one of the only times I’d heard Michael accept responsibility for the situation he was in and for the dysfunction of his organization.

   Even now, years later, it’s hard to understand why he was so hesitant about discussing problems like these—not just with me, but with anyone. Of course, some of it boils down to his distrust and paranoia, but to me those were only part of the equation. As a person who struggled with accepting reality, Michael could isolate himself, he could stay in Neverland, he could indulge his whims, but all those elements of his lifestyle were enabled by his finances. Saying out loud that the latter were in disarray made it a real problem, one that he could no longer avoid.

   When Al Malnik took charge of his finances, he assured Michael that he would get him out of the mess he was in. But Al told me that he also had said, “Michael, I can’t do this unless you do your part.” Now it looked like Michael had taken Al’s words to heart. He had to, in order for things to change. The continued wellbeing of his children, more than anything, compelled him to face what he had been avoiding for so long.

   We spoke a bit about my plans. I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, but now Michael said, “You know I can always use your help. You’re the one who left, remember? We can work together again.”

   “Yeah,” I said, “we could do that.” In that moment I realized that the majority of people in the organization with whom I’d had issues were no longer in the picture; Michael and Al Malnik had gotten rid of them. Michael and I didn’t make any decisions, but the reality was that when I was with him, at Neverland, I was back in my comfort zone, and I’m not just talking about the wine cellar, although I was certainly comfortable there. I knew the ins and outs of the job, exactly what Michael wanted and how he wanted things done. Working with Michael was my comfort zone.

   It was a nice moment. Both of us, in some ways, were at a crossroads. I had branched out since leaving Michael’s employ, but now I was finding my way back. He had finished an album and was facing the hard truths of his financial situation while feeling energized about starting anew. We sat in the quiet familiarity of the wine cellar, ruminating over our lives, how we had gotten where we were, and where we would go from here.

  

   SHORTLY AFTER NEW YEAR’S DAY, MICHAEL AND THE kids headed off to Miami. Michael suggested that while he was gone, I should have guests over if I liked. For years, I’d loved sharing Neverland with a few pals, and when Michael left for Miami, I had a kind of bold idea: I decided to invite Court and Derek to the ranch. While this sounds presumptuous of me (and perhaps it was), I had my reasons. At this point the lawsuit the two men had brought against Michael was in the process of being settled out of court. Much as I knew Michael was at fault for reneging on the stipulations of the contract, his view of it was simpler. Over Christmas, when we’d talked about it, he said, “You brought them back into my life. Now they’re suing me, so fix it.”

   “Okay,” I’d said to him, “I’ve been talking to them behind the scenes. I’ll do everything I can to make sure the deal goes through and the lawsuit goes away.”

   “Tell them I said hi,” Michael added, “and that it’s a shame things went this far, but I still like them.”

   Both sides were eager to reach an agreement. Michael liked and respected Court and Derek, and the feeling was mutual. I knew this, and thought that the lawyers were dragging out the suit unnecessarily, as lawyers always want to do. As the opposing legal teams went back and forth, I’d been talking to both sides. I kept reassuring Court and Derek that the delays weren’t coming from Michael, and I kept reminding Michael that he’d signed a contract with them and owed them money.

   I felt partially responsible for the situation. A settlement deal was on the table, but it hadn’t been signed. Michael always said that the best way to close a deal was to bring people to Neverland. It occurred to me that if Court and Derek returned to the ranch as guests—as they had been many times before—they would see that the days of acrimony were over. Of course, it was pretty radical to invite people who were suing Michael to be guests at his house, and I knew that Michael’s attorneys would think I was nuts. But lawyers tend to ignore the human element of negotiation.

   And so, for better or worse, Michael’s two former associates came up to the ranch. We had a nice evening. Court and Derek made it clear that they hadn’t really wanted to sue Michael. They just wanted to be paid for the work they had done. They left the ranch understanding that Michael liked and respected them and hated that things had come to such a pass. Everyone agreed that we should all put our emotions behind us and move ahead with the settlement.

   That night, while Court and Derek were still there, I got a call from Michael. He was in Miami with Aldo and Marie Nicole, my brother and sister, and he’d heard about Court and Derek’s visit. “Frank, why the fuck would you have those people at Neverland?” he demanded. Michael only swore when he was really upset or joking around. I was pretty sure he wasn’t joking around this time.

   “You don’t understand. Let me explain…,” I began. I thought it would be obvious to him that I was doing as I had promised— trying to make the lawsuit go away. Why else would I invite the two to the ranch? How could this possibly serve my own interests? “Don’t you realize your attorneys want to drag out this conflict?” I said to him. “The longer it takes, the more money they make. You can settle now, and get it over with.”

   Not surprisingly, Michael’s attorneys saw it differently, and as far as they were concerned, my invitation and the subsequent visit only reinforced their belief that I was a liability. Thus they pounced on the opportunity to share their view with Michael, convincing him that I was screwing up. Apparently I was the only one who thought I had saved him millions of dollars by soothing egos and encouraging Court and Derek to compromise.

   I tried to calm Michael down, but he was very angry. As I spoke, I could hear him talking to my siblings in the background, saying, “You won’t believe what Frank just did.” When I started to explain myself, he interrupted: “Why don’t you ever listen?”

   “Why don’t you listen?” I retorted. Then I gave up. “Fuck this. Obviously you don’t see what I’m trying to do for you. I’m your friend, just trying to help because I feel responsible for the mess. But go ahead. Keep spending attorney fees fighting something that doesn’t need to be fought. I give up.” I hung up the phone.

   I’d known all along that what I was doing was unorthodox, but I was confident that it would work. I didn’t really care what Michael’s attorneys—or anyone else in his organization for that matter—thought of me. I had already made enemies in the organization by speaking out and doing what I thought was best for Michael. Michael was the one who mattered. Maybe it sounds like hubris, but I genuinely thought what I was doing was within the bounds of his instructions. He had instructed me to do whatever it took to reach a settlement. He had said he didn’t want to hear any more about it, he just wanted it done.

   I went out to the pool and ran into Macaulay Culkin, who happened to be visiting the ranch with his friends Mila Kunis and Seth Green.

   “What did you do?” Mac asked, before adding, “Michael’s really pissed at you.” Wow. News travels fast. I realized Michael must have just spoken to Mac.

   “I really don’t care,” I said, and explained to Mac what was going on.

   Ten minutes later I got a call from Karen. In her calm, sympathetic way she said, “Michael thinks it’s best if you leave the ranch.”

   “No problem. I’m packing my bags.”

   I’d been kicked out of Neverland.

   I didn’t say anything to Court and Derek. When Michael was angry, he sometimes went for the jugular. I had a feeling he’d calm down. Sure enough, ten minutes later my phone rang again. It was Michael. I was angry and I was hurt, and I was going to let him know it. Before he could get a word out, I cut him off. “You want me to leave? I’m leaving.”

   “I don’t want you to leave,” he said calmly. “I want you to come to Miami tomorrow.”

   I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t surprised to hear this. Fighting with Michael was like fighting with my father, right down to the siblings chiming in on the other end of the line. Angry as I was, I knew just from hearing his voice that he’d forgiven me. Looking back on it now, I have to wonder how we could go from one emotional extreme to the other in a matter of seconds. We’d been screeching mad at each other just moments before. And yet neither one of us could find it in his heart to stay mad. It just wasn’t the nature of our friendship. We always forgave each other. So what did I do? I hopped on a plane and flew to Miami.