"I guess we should," Ben said, looking at me without blinking.

"Awesome." I took out my wallet. In the course of my opening it and his insisting I shut it, Daryl's card came tumbling out onto the bar.

"You dropped this." He unfolded it. "Should I be jealous?"

"Oh, G.o.d." I s.n.a.t.c.hed it back. "I need that in case he doesn't show."

"In case who doesn't show?"

I told him about Daryl and the rug and the pit stains. I told him about my new apartment, which would lead to my new life and how we are drawn to things we can't afford and people call it "taste" to make it palatable but what it really is is a kind of superficial cloying for happiness. But I was young and in my prime cloying years, so this was okay. And instead of telling me it was morally wrong and moderately illegal, he kissed me.

THE NEXT DAY, FRESH FROM THE ATM, I WAITED on a bustling Midtown street corner near my office. Daryl pulled up in a black Kia with gleaming rims and rolled down a magenta-tinted window. People stared. I leaned in, trying to push the actual doc.u.mentary Pimps Up, Hos Down: Hookers at the Point Pimps Up, Hos Down: Hookers at the Point to the further recesses of my mind. I made small talk about where he had come from, the fact that he owned a car. I couldn't tell where the parameters of the conversation should be, and was impressed by all cars. Even ones with naked-lady air-fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. to the further recesses of my mind. I made small talk about where he had come from, the fact that he owned a car. I couldn't tell where the parameters of the conversation should be, and was impressed by all cars. Even ones with naked-lady air-fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. How humiliating for her, How humiliating for her, I thought. To be stripped naked, back arched, and for what? Her home I thought. To be stripped naked, back arched, and for what? Her home still still stank of feet and cologne. I reached over through the pa.s.senger window and flicked her, sending her spinning. stank of feet and cologne. I reached over through the pa.s.senger window and flicked her, sending her spinning.

Daryl handed me a sticker with a bar code on it.

"There could be a bunch of bananas headed my way, couldn't there? Please don't send me three hundred fifty dollars' worth of bananas. Or any bananas at all."

I couldn't let go of the envelope of cash. The magenta tint was peeling from the edge of the window like skin.

"Well, Solange." Daryl slung his forearm over the steering wheel. "Life is like a box of chocolates."

"Sloane ..." I mumbled. "And I know. You never know what you're gonna get."

"No, man. s.h.i.t's picked over, and it makes your a.s.s fat."

"That's pretty funny," I said as I released the money.

Apparently, you don't need a gun to rob me. Just get me into a dark alley and tell me a decent joke.

Two days later a giant padded roll appeared outside my front door. Another tenant must have dragged it in. It leaned against my door frame, where it slumped, imposing but lazy, like an off-duty guard. I kicked it into my apartment. When I cut the strings to unfurl it, the carpet revealed what I already knew in my heart to be true. The fresh-off-the-loom scent wafted through the air. I checked the packing label to confirm it had been shipped not from an outlet in Greenwich but directly from the company's factory in Queens. This was a brand-new carpet. You could eat off it. Though you wouldn't dare.

"Yo. Solange. Did you get the carpet?"

Ever the service-oriented thief, Daryl called to check on his delivery. I would soon learn that calls from Daryl originated from a different number every time, a habit that seemed spylike in theory but ma.s.sively inconvenient in reality. Who keeps so many phones? Who borrows so many? And why? His ident.i.ty-masking also had the inverse effect, though I didn't have the heart to tell him. Daryl-along with my parents, who still block their home number for privacy-was my perpetual Unknown Number. Like blank tiles in Scrabble. Yes, they can be any letter you wish, but in the end there are only two tiles. It's the telecommunication equivalent of p.i.s.sing in a pool that turns your urine blue.

"Yes, Daryl." I sat in the middle of my mat of shame. "It's in great shape for a sample."

Daryl knew that I knew that he knew that I knew that this thing had come off the back of a truck. But I wanted it out there, on the record for both of us, that I was not consciously partic.i.p.ating in the black-market transfer of luxury home furnishings. Let the record show that while I may not have been innocent, I spoke the speech of an innocent person.

"Well"-he smirked through the phone-"there's not a lot of foot traffic in the store where it came from."

Apparently, he wanted the same thing. And apparently, carpets were not the only "display" items available courtesy of Daryl's warehouse on wheels. Why, just in were a shipment of hand-blown drawer pulls that may or may not have been damaged in transit. Was I interested? Reader, I was. Daryl and I had wisely thrown ourselves into the deep end with the carpet transaction. If the retail value of such a big-ticket item had made it past my thin moral filter, I had no business flinching at some lousy drawer pulls. It was a gateway carpet. So we agreed to meet in Union Square, where I would again come bearing a wad of cash, though slightly less thick than last time. In return, Daryl would send me a package of possibly chipped cabinet handles and drawer pulls from the outlet in Greenwich.

My money was on unchipped.

BEN HAD CALLED EVERY DAY FOR FOUR DAYS, HIS messages packed with charming jokes about the anthropomorphic nature of his relationship with my voice mail. I programmed his name into my phone without a last name. My phone-programming policy runs backward: if I barely know you, you go by your first name, and preferably an abbreviated version of that. Once we've been trapped in a bomb shelter together, forced to repopulate the human race as we know it, you get a last name. On the fifth day, I picked up.

"I thought you had a girlfriend."

"I would like to see you again."

"I'm sensing that. But you know," I whispered hostilely, "if I were a girl and called some guy every day for four days, I would be having what we like to refer to as 'a psychotic break.' "

"You are a girl."

"I'm trying to point out a double standard here."

"But when I do it?"

I didn't know what to say. Rather, I knew what to say, and it wasn't English. Whatever sound a cell phone snapping shut makes was the only appropriate one.

"Meet me in Union Square after work," he said, tentatively authoritative. "We'll get coffee. If it makes you feel better, I'll let you pay."

"I do have to be there this afternoon, anyway."

We sat on a park bench, Ben and I, with a metal armrest strategically between us. It was the start of fall, that time of year when everyone walks around New York declaring how hot it is for this time of year. It hasn't been cold cold in September in twenty years, and yet every year we are shocked. The emergence of roasted-nut vendors on the sidewalk and colored leaves in the elementary school windows won't stop you from sweating. Unless you put more thought into it than is normal, you end up wearing outfits that do not say "fashionable" so much as they say "uncle." And so I sat in my temporally schizophrenic linen dress and tall leather boots. I shoved the dress material under my knees to keep the wind away as Ben explained that tribal osmosis never lies.

He did, in fact, have a long-term girlfriend. Until recently. They were broken up. The pain was fresh. It was raw. It was grade D but edible. Her name was Lauren, and she designed retro underwear. He had moved out of their apartment, granting her sole custody of the birds and the phone bill, and was subletting a place nearby. Actually, he could point to his new bedroom window from where we sat, and did so. Something about seeing the window turned me puritanical. Probably because I knew how inevitable it was that I would soon see this bench from the other side. I looked at the ground.

Ben and this woman had been dating for longer than I'd owned anything I was wearing, including my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I had questions. Questions delivered to my brain in bunches, tied with ribbons of anxiety. Where were his things? Who broke up with whom? Were they on speaking terms? If she was his in-case-of-emergency person and he was. .h.i.t by a bus but lived, they'd probably get back together, right? The worst terrorist attack in American history was recent enough, and it had taught us that disasters make you appreciate what you already have, not what you barely know. But I felt I couldn't afford to gamble on the answers. The truth was, I was elated by this information. I adored this information in all its validating glory. But I also worried about the fragility of it. Purty rabbit. Crack! Dead. Purty rabbit. Crack! Dead. And so I asked nothing. Ben leaned over the cold armrest and held my hand. I pulled it back. And so I asked nothing. Ben leaned over the cold armrest and held my hand. I pulled it back.

"I have a meeting." I got up, glancing at the rubber band around my wrist where a watch might go.

"After what I just told you? Are you serious?"

"Yes. As a heart attack."

"Can you maybe pick something equally serious but less medical?"

"As an eight-year relationship?"

Really, I just didn't want him laying eyes on Daryl. How would I explain the suspect majesty that was Daryl? Clearly the idea of him, the card with his phone number, held its appeal. But the real-life physicality of Daryl had a darkness to it, a seedy underbelly that was more like an all-over-belly. Daryl in person was not my edgy connection to low-grade illegal activity but an inmate-looking person, stuffed into his clothes like they were sausage skin. No one likes to see how the sausage gets made. So I leaned down and kissed Ben and told him to call me. I'd even pick up this time.

I remember the salty-sweet combination of excitement and relief we both felt. Excitement at the start of a new love affair and relief that we had found each other despite the anti-incestuousness policy we had. Beyond that was the special relief we both reserved for him: he had narrowly escaped a sc.r.a.pe in which he would be with the wrong woman for the rest of his life. Like the man said the night we met: Now I have you. Now I have you. I actually preferred it when all of this was unspoken. It was when he spoke of it, outlined his feelings with such intensity and detail, that I should have been more concerned. But how can you be concerned with those eyes? How can you be concerned when a man who lives clear across town is waiting on your stoop as you leave for work in the morning, surprising you with coffee? When you describe a movie you saw when you were so little you think maybe you dreamed it and so he tracks down a copy of it? How can you be concerned when you see that twinkle in his family's and friends' eyes that says, I actually preferred it when all of this was unspoken. It was when he spoke of it, outlined his feelings with such intensity and detail, that I should have been more concerned. But how can you be concerned with those eyes? How can you be concerned when a man who lives clear across town is waiting on your stoop as you leave for work in the morning, surprising you with coffee? When you describe a movie you saw when you were so little you think maybe you dreamed it and so he tracks down a copy of it? How can you be concerned when you see that twinkle in his family's and friends' eyes that says, Thank G.o.d, you are nothing like her? Thank G.o.d, you are nothing like her? Or when you come out of the bathroom on a Sunday morning, looking like you've been hit by the nightlife truck, and he says, "I wake up every morning wanting to see you"? Then he shakes his head at the girlishness of his own confession and invites you to some family event many months from now. Or when you come out of the bathroom on a Sunday morning, looking like you've been hit by the nightlife truck, and he says, "I wake up every morning wanting to see you"? Then he shakes his head at the girlishness of his own confession and invites you to some family event many months from now.

These incidents are not cause for concern. They are cause to program his last name into your phone.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE c.o.kE GUYS. I HAD AN UPHOLSTERY guy. As the months rolled by, my acquisitions from Daryl could be pa.r.s.ed into two major categories. The first was home goods. Dishes, trivets, a lamp, a doork.n.o.b, and a throw pillow you'd sooner shield from an atomic bomb than throw anywhere. All well out of my price range and all packed like cattle into my new studio. I was a fence. A really, really nicely decorated fence. With only the faintest twinges of guilt, I accepted compliments from friends on my new goods. My mother came to visit and commented on how savvy I was, stretching my publishing-house salary to support these furnishings. The nicer my belongings became, the more the savvy transferred back her way, a personal compliment to her frugal-purchase-imbuing parenting skills. This is the good thing about furniture. As opposed to precious jewelry, no one is ever quite sure how much it costs. No one will believe you found an emerald ring in a nest of diamonds in a cereal box, but there are people in this world lucky enough to find original Eames chairs at flea markets. I just wasn't one of them.

The second category was information about Daryl himself. I learned a lot about what made Daryl Daryl, most of which I am no better for knowing. He hated in general and liked in specific. He hated most music. He hated the homeless. He hated desktop computers. He hated subway lines that never went aboveground. He hated pygmies, and when I asked him to provide me with an example of pygmy exposure, he described, in detail, the Puerto Rican Day Parade. He liked certain strip clubs and certain strippers on a pole-to-pole basis. He loved his car. He thought tropical places were overrated, except for South Beach in Miami, because the one time he went there it was quiet and there weren't any homeless people. When I told him this was not the standard impression of South Beach, he told me that everyone I knew was going to the wrong part. He liked chicken sandwiches and bought them constantly, despite being critical of their mayo-to-meat ratio.

"Why don't you just make your own chicken sandwiches and bring them in to work? Sometimes I make my lunch."

"I can't." Daryl rubbed his belly, leaning on a traffic light on the corner of Twenty-third and Park. "Because then I'll have all this chicken lying around the house and I'll eat it before it gets to the sandwich."

"I have that problem, too."

"And I'm not allowed to eat in the stockroom."

"Oh, okay." I laughed, and took my most recent packing slip.

Siphoning off thousands of dollars of merchandise from the company was one thing, but a Subway sandwich wrapper in the trash can? The man had his limits.

ONE NIGHT I WAS COMING HOME LATE, TREATING myself to a post-midnight cab tour of the city, when I realized I had developed Ben's tic of wanting to see him all day. And by "tic" I mean complete infatuation. We were, in a word, disgusting. Slightly inebriated, I reached for my phone. Finding lip balm instead, I applied it, distracted like an animal. What was I looking for again? Oh, yes. I held the phone close to my face. Nothing goes together quite so well as drunk people and b.u.t.tons. I left what my drunken self was sure was an adorably articulate message. Which is when Ben's voice mail came to life, calling me from the other line. "How dare you," I hiccupped. "Your voice mail was about to say something brilliant."

Silence.

"h.e.l.lo?"

The phone went dead.

It had been just under a year since I'd met Ben in the bar. Just when I was becoming entirely relaxed in my relationship (as a show of good affection, I had put Ben's middle name in my phone), he started behaving oddly. I couldn't put my finger on it, but while I wasn't looking we had thinned from two very busy people to one very busy person.

The faucet of affection had slowed to a drip. One morning I got up early and went downtown. I waited on his stoop with coffee. He kissed me on the cheek. Was this how relationships worked? One person always at the foot of the stairs and one at the top? That actually seemed pretty accurate for most couples I knew, but surely it did not apply to us. Soon I became hyper-aware of when I had called him last. I began fishing for compliments, picking fights, inciting jealousy whenever possible through a variety of pulse-checking activities that registered on the same scale as a lightbulb going out. You just think, Oh, that happened, Oh, that happened, and screw in another one. While Ben was in the bathroom, I flipped over a postcard on his refrigerator and found myself at once comforted and disappointed to see the "Love, Mom" at the border. When he returned from a trip and called me, I heard a noise and asked him if he was at baggage claim. and screw in another one. While Ben was in the bathroom, I flipped over a postcard on his refrigerator and found myself at once comforted and disappointed to see the "Love, Mom" at the border. When he returned from a trip and called me, I heard a noise and asked him if he was at baggage claim.

"No." He seemed perfectly bored by the question.

"That's the TV."

"Oh, so you're home already?"

I had an antique hair clip that I used very judiciously. The clasp was on its last screw. Given its advancing age, I knew I was allotted a limited number of uses when I bought it. Ben loved to play with it every time he came to my apartment, pressing it open as if it were a mechanical pen. Click, click, click. This thing I had opened and shut no more than a dozen times. Click, click, click. I could feel one eye narrowing as though afflicted with a cartoon migraine. Every word out of his mouth was eclipsed by the sound of metal breaking away from tortoisesh.e.l.l.

"Could you stop that, please?"

"Stop what?" Click Click.

I couldn't take it anymore. I leaped off the bed, ready to grab it from his hand.

"That."

One thing that's embarra.s.sing is standing naked in front of someone, having transformed from a s.e.x object into a scolding maternal figure. Or the reverse, a little girl who puts such proprietary stock in meaningless things. It's especially awkward if this comes at a point when you have morphed into every bad cliche about your own gender, like some mutant multiwinged b.u.t.terfly come out of the crazy coc.o.o.n that looked so smooth from the outside.

"I think someone's being a li-ttle paranoid," he said, and clicked it one more time.

It broke into pieces.

I held still, waiting for things to go back to the way they were. This behavior, right now, was the abnormality. It reminded me of when I was in elementary school and had a textbook with a drawing of a woman in it. Some kids looked at the picture and saw an old witch and some saw a young girl. Whatever you saw you could unsee if someone showed you how. Change the nose to an elbow, a neck to a skirt, a wart to an eye. See her now? I always saw the witch first. I'd try to surprise myself, sneak up on the book with the young girl in mind, open my eyes and... Nope. Witch.

"It doesn't matter," said my teacher. "The point of the exercise is to see what you want to see."

"But what if I don't want want to see the witch?" to see the witch?"

It's not the worst thing in the world to choose to believe the bad is temporary and the good is permanent. It's just not the smartest.

Lauren! It had to be Lauren. He needed closure, not coffee. I suggested they have lunch together. At this point, I was friends with all my exes. Not in a forced "Collect all five!" kind of way, but in that way you make nice with everyone in your early twenties. When it seems impossible that a deep connection with another person could just go away instead of changing form. It seems impossible that you will one day look up and say the words "I used to date someone who lived in that building," referring to a three-year relationship. As simple as if it was a pizza place that is now a dry cleaner's. It happens. Keep walking.

As soon as it left my mouth, I realized that it wasn't my place to suggest. I would have to be dating Ben for years before I lapped Lauren in the area of personal wisdom.

"I don't think that's a great idea," Ben confirmed my intern status.

My plan negged, I felt oddly like the child of Ben and this woman I had never met. Up until this point, I had thought we could all be like a Woody Allen film. We could be great friends, and our humor would stem from the fact that there was no way in h.e.l.l we should get along this well. In addition to an emotional suspension of disbelief, that would require us all being equals. Suddenly, I was the Soon-Yi. I did not want to be the Soon-Yi. I also didn't want to be the Mia, the one who finds the Polaroids. It was bad enough I was turning over the postcards. Woody was the only pure option, and that role had already been cast.

BEN WAS OUT OF TOWN AND I WAS IN THE MIDDLE of a work dinner, seated at a packed table covered in baskets of calamari and advance copies of books, when my phone rang. People around me held conversations on the diagonal. I fumbled in my bag underneath the bench and grabbed it. Unknown Number.

"h.e.l.lo?" I shouted. "Daryl?"

"Doug?" the voice said. "Is this Doug?"

"I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number."

For Christ's sake, was there no one in this town who could get my name right?

"Sloane?"

"This is she."

"It's Lauren. Ben's girlfriend."

You know that sensation when you lift up a carton of milk you expect to find full but it's empty, and it goes flying through the air with surprising force?

"Could you hold on for just one second?"

I slid roughly over the knees of people next to me and went outside. By now there was no confusion about the weather. It was cold cold cold. I held my jacket closed with my fist. cold. I held my jacket closed with my fist.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi. Not to be rude, but how did you get my phone number?"

"It was in Ben's phone."

"Not to be dense, but how did you get Ben's phone?"

"He went out to pick up food and I took it off his desk."

And there was Ben's face, stuck to the side of the milk carton, missing. I sat on the curb as the bombs went off: Lauren and Ben had never broken up. True, they were having problems grave enough to warrant an auxiliary housing situation, but every absence from our relationship could be explained by his attendance in theirs. Unlike her underwear line, their relationship wasn't retro. It was happening in the present tense. She asked me where I was on his birthday, and when I said it had not come yet, she said, "Yes, it has." I asked where she thought he was going all those mornings when he appeared on my stoop.

"He told me he was going to work out."

"Maybe he was," I suggested. "Maybe he ran to my place."