The performance finally fell away.

For one moment, before he rebuilt it, I saw what was actually underneath the warmth and the laugh lines and the forty years — and it was nothing.

Not rage, not fear, not even hatred.

A flat, cold, calculating emptiness, assessing the situation, looking for the exit.

It lasted less than a second.

Then the mask came back up, and my friend’s face returned, wearing an expression of wounded betrayal.

But I had seen it.