Cover

Prologue

THE FOOTSTEPS OUTSIDE MY DOOR WERE NOT THE USUAL clicking of my neighbor’s heels, but scuffling, like a rodent. I stepped quietly, heel-to-toe, from my bedroom to the hallway, wearing only a thin T-shirt and ratty underwear. The peephole on the door was old; you had to swing aside a silver-dollar-sized medallion in order to look through a little circle of semitransparent glass. The change in light was obvious from the outside so I never used it. Instead, I placed my ear against the door.

I heard my roommate Sam’s thin voice from her room hiss, “What’s happening?” but I didn’t answer. It was past midnight and someone was pacing back and forth in our hallway. The door shifted against my face a little as someone leaned against it.

The knock made me jump. I saw Sam’s little pink face peek around her doorframe at the end of the hall. The knocks started coming rapidly then.

James’s eyes were bloodshot when I opened the door, his cheeks hollow, the hair on the back of his head had grown out unevenly. I stood in the doorway, in my underwear, holding on to the brass knob, jiggling it back and forth in my palm. “What are you doing here?” I said. At first I couldn’t think how he found me in the first place, then I remembered all the times I’d given him my address so he could order cars home for me at night.

“Can I come in?” he said. I could smell alcohol on him.

I glanced at Sam, who ducked back into her bedroom. The apartment had no common space, just a galley kitchen, little bathroom, and hallway. I wavered, not yet stepping out of the way.

He opened his wallet. “We owe you money,” he said. “We never paid you for that last week. I told you not to let us get away with that.”

I didn’t say anything but moved aside to let him pass.

I watched him look into my bedroom—the first unfurnished room I’d lived in since moving to New York—the futon mattress on the floor in the corner, the ripped-up sheets, the books piled against the wall. I wondered if he’d realize how many came from his house, how many I’d taken from the walls of shelves in his wife’s office. He wiped sweat from his chin. There was nowhere to sit down.

“May I have a glass of water?” he said. The politeness of the question bothered me.

I moved to the kitchen and he walked past me and into Sam’s room without asking. “Oh,” I heard him mumble, “Sorry.”

“My roommate,” I said, handing him the water.

He took a sip and set it on the counter. “Just you two?” he said, looking around. “It’s a one-bedroom then or is there a living room?”