Lara had chosen her name before and it was weird to pick another one, even though (or maybe because) it was a similar process. She had stood in her room and stared at herself in the mirror while she wore the clothes the name would live in. After a while, the name — diminutive, emptied of personality, available — presented itself to her spontaneously.

She had misjudged him: It turned out that what he was after was something other than an empty vessel to be filled with his fantasies. On the walk they had taken around the park by the river that she had chosen as a way to make sure he wasn’t a serial killer, he had wanted to talk to her about her studies and had gone on and on about Theodore Dreiser, whom he had written his PhD dissertation on nearly a decade prior. His diction was careful if a little pretentious, and he spoke in a quiet, low monotone. At the end of it he had asked if Kitty was her real name and she realized she would have to adjust her persona a bit.

“Yes,” Lara said.

“Is that what you go by?” he said. “Among friends, I mean.”

“I’m not your friend,” she said.

He returned his gaze to the wood-chipped path.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“If you want to know,” Lara said, affecting a conciliatory tone, “my real name is Katie. My friends call me Kitty.”

“I guess I should call you Katie, then,” he said. “Because I’m not your friend.”

“Right,” Lara said.

He had this strange way of looking at her. Not possessively, but curiously, and unabashedly. He liked to emphasize a point he was making by turning his head toward her and making eye contact.

She walked him back to his car in the parking lot behind the hospital and watched him drive off. Standing there, she realized how tense she was. It really was like becoming another person. She mouthed her two new names — Kitty, Katie. There was really no way to tell if he was a serial killer or not, she realized.

♒

At night, she ruminated on the meeting with him. There were skills of compartmentalization she would have to learn.

She found herself thinking about one night a year ago, maybe the first time she had realized she was pretty. She had gone early to a party her friend Jenna hosted at her apartment on Thayer Street. Her boyfriend, Kenny, had just returned from an internship on the East Coast; Jenna had just returned from a year abroad in Paris. It was a housewarming party for the apartment they were signing a lease on together.

By the time Lara got there, the apartment was in perfect order, with bottles and cups lined up on the kitchen counter and jazz playing from a small Bluetooth speaker on the granite coffee table. Jenna answered the door.