A man approached me, thrust a pizza box into my chest. I could feel the rough cardboard against my nipples even through my bra. I jerked my head down and saw his toothless grin.

“Have dinner with me?” he rasped.

I turned and ran, the thin soles of my shoes thwacking against the pavement.

THE MAN WITH THE GLASS EYE BOARDED THE ELEVATOR WITH me when I made it back to the building. “Do you want to come over sometime?” I asked, still catching my breath. “Smoke pot with me like you used to do with Roxanne?”

He looked at me for a moment, trying to make out whether or not I was serious, then he laughed. “Sure,” he said.

“Do you want to come over now?”

“Okay,” he said.

He followed me inside and peeked into my bedroom through the open door as I shed my shoes and backpack in the hall. “I thought you said you had a roommate. Did she move out?”

“No,” I said. “Sam’s been sick. I actually don’t really know when she’s coming back.”

“Did she take her stuff?”

“No,” I said. “That’s my room.”

I didn’t offer any further explanation so he didn’t ask any more questions.

“We can hang out in Sam’s room,” I said. “She has a couch.”

I led him to Sam’s peppermint-striped loveseat. He looked kind of funny sitting on it, a big grown-up man in a little girl’s room. “Oh no,” he said, glancing around at the mess, “Your lamp.”

I didn’t want to talk about the robbery so I just replied, “Yeah, I need to clean that up,” then left him there and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. While I waited for the water to boil I fished out Sam’s weed. I’d mocked her for it when I first moved in, for keeping it so hidden. She always cleaned up right after smoking, sealing the weed back up in one of her old pill bottles, putting it back in the tin with the rolling paper, tossing the dead ends of her blunts out the window, as if she were going to be found out somehow. I was thankful for it now.

Returning to Sam’s room with a pot of tea and a thick joint on Sam’s silly brass serving tray, I asked the man with the glass eye, “So, what’s your name anyway?”

“Lewis,” he said, and at the same time in my mind, I thought, It doesn’t matter. The name rattled around in my brain anyway. Lewis Lewis Lewis. Had I ever fucked someone named Lewis before? It didn’t sound familiar, but I didn’t trust my memory.