When Old Friends Become Strangers
David Rothstein emailed me an invite to his birthday party at Nobu, an expensive sushi restaurant in Malibu. I perused the guest list and saw names of people I hadn’t thought of in years. Some had become lawyers and agents and power-mongers beyond my scope. They were now strangers with salaries and lifestyles dwarfing my own. The thought of engaging them in conversation was horrifying.
I trashed the invite eager to avoid reminders of my own failings. But a few days later I reconsidered. I hadn’t seen Rothstein in years and he’d always been kind to me. Fate brought us together on a fourth-grade field trip to Leo Carrillo State Beach. He skipped rocks across the waves and one of the stones struck me in the temple. I needed seven stitches to close the wound. Rothstein spent the next decade apologizing and we became fast friends.
Rothstein was an avid baseball card collector. During college, I helped him find local garage sales and convince reluctant moms to sell their sons’ card collections at low rates. Inevitably, he bought my own card collection when I needed money to pay taxes. He graduated magna cum laude and became a renowned hedge fund manager. In 2004, he was accused of running a high-stakes Ponzi scheme. He eluded prosecution and shifted his money into real estate. He now earned more in a week than I earned in a year, but we remained friends.
