John Lutz - Single white female

"Right." She watched him bustle away, the busy waiter, showing her he wasn't the sort to get smarmy and make a pest of himself.

Allie chewed on the crushed ice in her glass for a while, thinking about how life could change so drastically and unexpectedly. A phone call in the night, and the center of her universe had shifted. A simple phone call, and a relentless momentum had taken hold. Everyone's fate was so precariously balanced, even if people didn't seem to know it.

She paid for her lunch and left a tip, nodding to Graham Knox as she pushed open the door to the street. In the bright sunlight outside the restaurant she stood still for a few minutes, as if trying to decide which direction to take.

Then she walked back to her apartment and phoned in the ad.

ALLIE'S classified ad appeared in the Wednesday Times. Seated in bright sunlight at her kitchen table, steaming coffee cup before her, she read it to make sure it was worded correctly, then found herself scanning the news. The city's murder rate was up (a bloodless statistic listed along with the birth and divorce rates and per capita income). A woman's body had been found in her apartment, dismembered and decomposed. Yesterday a man's body had been discovered hidden in the bushes in Central Park, only a few hundred feet from Fifth Avenue. Someone had struck him in the back of the head with a sharp rock, perhaps during sexual intercourse, and severed his hands. New York was a tumult of souls seeking fulfillment bright and dark, where sanity and madness converged often and sometimes violently. Allie grimaced. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to die there. The rest of that week her phone rang almost continuously. Most of the people who answered her ad were eliminated almost immediately by the amount of rent, or the apartment's precise location, or the fact that Allie preferred a nonsmoker without a pet. Or for various personal reasons.

After the initial winnowing process, five seemed promising enough to interview.

Allie set up appointments and had each person who arrived fill out the rental application form she'd composed and printed out on her computer. It asked for present and previous addresses. Occupation, salary, reason for wanting to move, approximate work/sleep schedule. Whether friends would be entertained in the apartment and if so how often. Any hobbies or activities that might cause problems.

Afterward, mulling over the interviews and rental applications, she reflected that no matter how much information you gleaned about someone, you were still taking a chance on any prospective roommate. It figured to be that way. Even people who'd known each other for years and then married, sometimes found out when living together day in, day out that they hadn't really known each other. She felt a cold weight in the pit of her stomach. She hadn't really known Sam, and she'd lived with him for two months.

Allie finally settled on Hedra Carlson, a twenty-nine-year-old temporary office worker with a hesitant smile and a shy manner. Hedra wasn't the perfect applicant, but she certainly was the best bet out of those who'd responded. And Allie, smiling inwardly, realized the real reason she'd chosen Hedra was that the diffident and quiet woman was the least likely of any she'd seen to leave dirty socks on the floor and hair in the shower drain. So it came down to personality rather than employment records, pastimes, or schedules. To DNA, maybe. With Hedra as a roommate, Allie would be giving up as little of her independence as possible. Simple as that.

As soon as she'd informed the ecstatically grateful Hedra by phone that she could move in immediately, Allie tore the other applications in half and dropped them in the wastebasket. They hadn't proved very useful, since this business of choosing a roommate had reverted to emotion and a certain positive feeling about the applicant. But that was okay. Maybe in something like this, unknown territory, instinct was the most reli-able compass; the floating needle in the heart.

Allie had already shuffled the items that had been stored in the second bedroom, spreading some throughout the apartment, transferring most of them to her insecure though padlocked storage area in the basement. At a used-furniture store, she bought a four-section folding screen to isolate the alcove she used as her office. The screen was quite a find. It had a few stains on it, but it was gray silk and adorned with a delicate black Chinese willow design. She thought it added something to the decor while concealing her desk and computer.

Hedra moved in by degrees over the next few days. She didn't have that many possessions, and the one short trip by a moving company to bring in a bed, dresser, chair, and several boxes went smoothly. Allie was sure no one who mattered had seen which apartment the movers actually entered and left.

The smoothness of the move seemed a good omen. The first night with Hedra in the apartment, Allie slept soundly, not once waking to lie restless and wondering about money and the near future. Something in her life was going right. Maybe there was balance in the world.

Friday, in the sun-drenched kitchen that smelled of burnt toast, the roommates had their first breakfast together. After asking politely, Hedra had turned on the radio at low volume. WRNY was playing soft rock from the Seventies-Jefferson Airplane, the Beach Boys. God, the Beach Boys! Harmonizing about innocence and surf and sand, nothing deeper than a dime. Allie was glad Hedra liked the Beach Boys.

The agreement was that each roommate would have an assigned set of shelves in the refrigerator, and each would prepare her own meals. Allie, dressed for a meeting with Mayfair, sat before coffee and two slices of toast with grape jam. Hedra, still in her robe, was swigging Coca-Cola from a can and munching a cold slice of the sausage-mushroom pizza she'd had delivered last night. Pizza, especially with mushrooms, was something Allie didn't like to look at so early in the morning, but she decided she could stand it, considering Hedra was paying half the rent and utilities.

Gazing across the table at Hedra, Allie wondered for the first time if the woman's appearance had a great deal to do with why she'd settled on her for a roommate. Hedra was average height and slim, but without much of a figure. Her face was oval with small, even features and pale green eyes too close together beneath eyebrows that could use shaping despite the current unplucked, natural fashion. Hers was the sort of face you'd expect to see when opening a Victorian locket. The set of her eyes lent her an apprehensive, searching expression, as if she were afraid one wrong move would lose the entire game. She would have been somewhat attractive if she'd only done something with her medium-length brown hair. She wore it pulled back tightly with a center part, but hanging loose on the sides, like a Sixties folksinger. She wasn't the type to duck into Bloomingdale's and get made over. There was an inherent plainness about her, a subservience. Hedra, Allie knew, was no threat.

Hedra used a finger to tuck a strand of cold cheese into her mouth. "I'm sure this is gonna work out, Allie." Her voice was soft and carefully modulated. It suggested the same apprehension as her eyes. Had she ever in her life really been sure of anything? Allie the practical said, "You going to work today?"

Hedra giggled, her hand covering her mouth, for a moment looking like sixteen-year-old concealing braces. Surprising Allie. "You sound like my mother."

Her mother! Jesus, loosen up, Allie told herself. Back away and breathe. She smiled. "Yeah, I guess I do. Sorry. I was just making conversation, not checking up on you. Hey, for all I care, you can stay out all night for the prom."

"I'm way past those years," Hedra said. "Never was much of a dancer anyway. Do you dance?"