SWF Seeks Same

by John Lutz

  Afterward she ordered another Diet Pepsi and sat sipping it through a straw while most of the lunchtime crowd drifted outside. A vintage Beatles tune, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” came over the sound system. Softly. People came here to eat, not listen to music. It was one of Allie’s favorite Beatles numbers, so she leaned back, closed her eyes, and let it play over her mind. And she was thinking of Sam, trying not to cry.

  When Stevie Wonder took over, she opened her tear-clouded eyes and saw that Graham was staring curiously at her from the other side of the restaurant, like a confused terrier.

  Allie nodded to him and he looked away. Not ill at ease, but as if he didn’t want to cause her embarrassment.

  She slid her cool glass to the side and examined the classified columns of the newspapers she’d bought, laying each one flat on the table, not caring about the spreading damp spots from puddles left by her glass.

  She decided to call her ad into the Times. The other ads in their ‘Apartments to Share’ column seemed respectable enough—not placed by creeps or swingers trying to make contact. Abbreviations abounded in the small print: Single white female was, in the lexicon of the classified columns, ‘SWF.’ Also being sought to share ‘Apt W Pvt Rm’ were ‘Yng Prof’l Fem,’ ‘GWM,’ ‘SBF,’ and ‘SBM prof nSmkr.’ Allie took these to mean ‘Young professional female; gay white male; single black female; and single black male professional, nonsmoker.’

  She decided to make the wording of her ad more economical and change it to read “SWF seeks same.”

  Graham took the order of a middle-aged couple who’d just entered the restaurant, then walked over to Allie. For the first time she noticed that he had an oddly bouncy sort of walk, jaunty, with a lot of spring in his knees. A tall Groucho Marx. He used his sawed-off pencil as a pointer. “Refill on the Pepsi?”

  “No, thanks, I’m going in a minute.”

  He tucked the pencil behind his ear, then thumbed through the torn-off order slips stuck into the cover of his note pad. He laid Allie’s check on the table with practiced precision, as if dealing her a card face up. “You can pay the cashier up by the door. See you next time, Allie.”

  “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.

  Chapter 8

  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 reliable 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 décor 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?”

  “I used to,” Allie said, remembering nights out with Sam. “I love to dance.”

  “I never actually went to a prom. Did you?”

  “Twice. Back in Illinois. In a green world I barely remember.”

  “Musta been nice.”

  “No, not really. A little nerd named Pinky tried to rape me in the backseat of a ‘sixty-five Chevy.”

  For a second Hedra seemed shocked. Then she said, “Well, those things happen.”

  “I guess. It wasn’t really much of an attempt. Not the sort of thing you go to the police about.”

  “Oh, you should have reported him.”

  Allie laughed. “Then half the girls at the prom should have signed complaints against their dates. I mean, there’s attempted rape and then there’s attempted rape.”

  “I can’t see much difference.”

  Allie took a bite of toast. Swallowed. Now who should lighten up? Next they’d be discussing the social ramifications of date rape. “Well, maybe you’re right, but it was the consequence of teenage hormones, and a long time ago.”

  Hedra shot a frantic glance at the wall clock, as if suddenly remembering there was such a thing as measurable time. “Golly, almost eight-thirty. I am working today. Gonna be a receptionist for a while at a place over on Fifth Avenue. I better shower and dress.” She stood up and placed her dishes in the sink, carefully not clinking them too hard against the porcelain. “You are done with the bathroom, aren’t you?”

  “Sure. All yours.”

  “I’ll do my dishes when I get home,” Hedra said. “Yours, too, if you want.”

  “I’ll take care of them this time,” Allie said. “I’m coming home around noon to do some computer work.”

  “I won’t be here … home till this evening.” Hedra yanked the sash of her robe tight around her thin waist and carefully tied it in a bow, though she was on her way to the shower.

  She paused in the kitchen doorway and turned to look at Allie. “I think this is gonna work out just great, you and me. No, I don’t just think it, I’m positive of it!” She was like an enthused ingénue in a movie.

  Allie put down her half-eaten crescent of toast and started to agree, but Hedra was already gone. Deferential ghost of a girl, wanting to be somewhere else.

  She has a real problem with her shyness, Allie thought. A shame, because she wouldn’t be nearly as unattractive as she seemed to believe, if she’d learn to dress effectively and use makeup to advantage.

  But maybe she fancied herself the intellectual type. Those boxes she’d had brought in might have been stuffed with books. Or maybe, looking and acting as she did, she attracted the sort of men she liked. Who knew about men? Joan Collins? Madonna?

  Not Allie.

  Goddamn you, Sam!

  Hedra was humming what sounded like a hymn in the shower when Allie left to meet Mayfair.

  Chapter 9

  HEDRA said, “I envy you, Allie. I mean, your looks, your clothes, guys always calling and leaving messages on your answering machine.”

  “My answering machine?”

  Hedra looked away from Allie’s gaze. “I can’t help hearing you check for messages now and then. I’m sorry, Allie, I don’t mean to be nosy.”

  In the two weeks since Hedra had moved in, this was one of the few evenings they were spending together in the apartment. It was storming outside, and the wind was slamming sheets of rain against the window, rattling the panes. Hedra was sitting in the small wing chair next to a lamp. She’d been reading a mystery novel, something with “death” in the title, while Allie was slumped on the sofa, idly watching the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.” Hedra traded paperbacks at a second-hand bookshop, she said. She had a small and ever-changing collection of dogeared mysteries lined up on her bedroom windowsill. The fear on her pale young face prompted a pang of pity in Allie.

  “Listen, I know you’re not nosy,” Allie said. “Two people in the same apartment, we’re gonna know something about each other’s lives. No way around it. I suppose we’ll have to trust one another. And what’s this about my social life? You’ve been out with someone at least five times in the past two weeks.” Which was not only true but a conservative estimate. Each time, Hedra had gotten dressed up, even combed her mousy brown hair to fall below her shoulders, and left to meet her date before dinner. She’d explained to Allie that this way he wouldn’t attract the neighbors’ suspicions by picking her up at the apartment. Allie appreciated her discretion, though she didn’t think it necessary to carry it to that extreme. What was this guy going to do, hop out of a limo with a bouquet of roses in each hand?

  Wind and rain crashed at the window, as if determined to get inside. Gentle Jim Lehrer was lobbing kindly, probing questions at an Alabama prosecuting attorney who thought an island penal colony should be established off the U.S coast to incarcerate hardcore criminals. Lehrer was making comparisons to Devil’s Island while the prosecuting attorney was talking about a land east of Eden.

  Hedra settled back in her chair and closed the novel. She fidgeted with it so violently Allie thought the lurid cover might tear. “Truth is, Allie, I haven’t really been going out on dates. I got a job working nights, typing reports at a company over near Lincoln Center.”

  Huh? The girl could surprise. “Then how come you lied to me?”

  Hedra dropped the novel; she jerked when it thumped on the floor, but she didn’t bother to pick it up. “I was jealous of you, I guess. The way you’re so assertive and active and all. I didn’t want you to think I was some wallflower wimp, so when I took the temporary night job, I decided to tell you I was going out to meet a man instead of a typewriter.”

  “There was no reason to lie,” Allie assured her. “I don’t consider you any kind of wimp, Hedra. And your private life’s none of my business.”

  Hedra blushed; it was obvious even in the yellow lamplight. The wind drummed rain against the window. Sounded as if the storm had claws and was clambering to get in. “There’s another reason I said I was meeting a man. I didn’t want you to think … you know.”

  Allie didn’t know. Not at first. Then she laughed. “I never doubted your sexual preference, Hedra, or I wouldn’t have chosen you for a roommate.”

  Squirming in her chair, Hedra said, “It’s just that I have trouble meeting men, while you
seem to have trouble holding them off. Oh, I mean, I can see why. You have such confidence and style and all.”

  Allie was getting tired of Hedra’s unabashed admiration that bordered on idolatry. It was the one thing in their otherwise smooth relationship that bothered her. “Hell, I’m no beauty contest winner, Hedra. Not even a runner-up.”

  “Beauty comes from inside,” Hedra said solemnly.

  What could Allie say to that? So does a fart? From the corner of her eye she saw that Lehrer was talking with the U.S. Attorney General now. What would the Administration think about resurrecting Devil’s Island American style? Well, it was a possibility. She stood up from the sofa. “It’s a crummy night outside. I’m gonna make a cup of tea. You want one?”

  “Yes, please. No—wait, I’ll help you.”

  “No you won’t. Stay put.”

  The command had come out sharper than Allie intended. The subdued roommate sank back into her chair and seemed prepared to stay in that position for days.

  In the kitchen, Allie filled two cups with water, placed them in the microwave, and set the timer for three minutes.

  While she was waiting for the water to boil, she wished again that Hedra would stop idolizing her for what she no doubt considered an outgoing if not downright hedonistic lifestyle. Not that Allie wasn’t somewhat complimented by Hedra’s open admiration. Who wouldn’t be? But at the same time it made her uncomfortable. This wasn’t part of the deal. She didn’t want to be anyone’s big sister.

  It was true that word of her and Sam’s breakup had gotten around, and unctuous, curly-haired Billy Stothers from Sam’s office had phoned her several times for a date. Allie had gone out with him once, to a boring off-Broadway play and then a late dinner and dancing.

  Stothers hadn’t tried to bed her that night; he was the patient sort. But he bored the hell out of her with his stock, predictable lies, and she was trying to dissuade him, but nicely. Which prompted the spate of messages on her machine. Actually Stothers and Mayfair had been the only men who’d phoned during the past two weeks.