I reluctantly take the tablet from her, and flip through the familiar file format of our clients: a smiling photo and the answers from the initial questionnaire. This one ideally wants to be married within two years. That one is new to the city and wants someone to “eat his way through New York with.” (His words, not mine. And obviously we are going to have to do something about them if I take him on.)

And then there’s Jude Campbell. There’s nothing very special about Jude’s profile. He’s good-looking enough. His answers are normal enough. Or, I should say, there’s almost nothing very special about Jude’s profile.

Jude apparently moved here from Scotland a couple of years ago. Which means Jude has an accent. And if I am going to stake my whole career on one guy’s love match?

I’m picking the dude with the Scottish accent.

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

ZOEY

Get across the street. That’s all you have to do: Get across the street.

Except of course it’s not that simple, because it’s not a normal street and it’s not a normal city, and before I can cross the street I have to leave my apartment. “Apartment” being the oh-so-hilarious code name for rathole. Although I guess for actual rats, it would be a palace. Actual rats are out there, by the way, waiting to run across my shoes and up my legs, little rat teeth chittering, dropping diseases on me, plumes of germs surrounding them like a deadly cloud around Pig Pen.

Okay. It’s okay. Just because the “apartment” is half-a-room total, and the couch doubles as a bed, and the shower is in a corner of the kitchen, and you have to climb over the furniture to go anywhere, is no reason to get upset. You’re having a new experience! Still, if I don’t escape I’ll go mad, so here we are.

Laptop, check. Purse, check. Keys, check. Unlock the chain and the deadbolt. Slowly open the door the tiniest crack.

“Coming out,” I yell, the warning I was taught to use on the day I moved in, by a neighbor I haven’t seen since. I used to hear her, the way I assume she hears me, announcing her movement into the hallway. There’s only room for one person to use it at a time, and if you don’t announce yourself and there’s someone already there, you risk bodily harm, and one of you will have to retreat to give the other person room to finish using the hallway. When no one responds, I open my door all the way, briskly exit, and relock it behind me.