Chapter 1: Room

Since Riley mentioned it, Mara developed the unconscious habit of looking into the empty room. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he’d said, “if we could find the ideal roommate to help with the rent?”

Mara responded with skepticism, thinking of roommates at the dorm, who behaved like Girls Gone Wild. She wasn’t a prude, but what about quiet passion?

Still, he had a point. Another roommate would free up money. Her parents footed tuition and living expenses, but they had limits. And now, with cutbacks at State, she might have to stay a fifth year to get all her classes. Though she took the occasional job, like the summer internship at the TV station, she didn’t work regularly.

So she agreed and they put up a notice on craigslist, and mentioned it to friends. Last year, she and Riley became roommates when friends linked them up. She discovered he was a serious student, didn’t drink much and didn’t smoke. Plus he was sweet, like a brother. After the events of the summer, their relationship grew tighter. Maybe they’d get lucky and find someone good.

The room was small, which was why they didn’t think of renting it before. Overall the apartment had three bedrooms, two large and the small one, one-and-a-half bathrooms, living room and a large kitchen.

On the fourth of five floors on Pine, the living room overlooked the street and would have had an expansive view down to Market, absent the brick building across the way. Instead, they watched westward cars racing up the one-way street. They used the laundry room in the basement, but went to the laundromat on Bush when they had a lot to wash. Mara parked her yellow VW in the underground garage.

*

Three prospects responded. One was a businesswoman, another a student and the third a young woman vague about what she was doing.

Sheila Very toured the apartment like a real estate agent, though she was an event planner based in Dallas. She wore a blue dress suit, matching high heels and a silky red, white and blue scarf tucked into the collar of a white blouse. A brilliantly white smile was fixed to her face.

Afterwards, they sat at the kitchen table, Mara and Riley opposite her. She appraised them for a moment, then looked to Mara.

“What kind of household do you run?”

The question caught her off-guard. She looked to Riley, then back at Sheila.

“I like structure and order in my home. I won’t be here most the time, but I expect nothing less when I am.”

“It kinda runs itself,” Riley said. “We pick up after ourselves--”

“--And dust and vacuum when it needs it.” Mara added.

Sheila looked doubtful, then, addressing Riley, pointed to her own blonde coiffure.

“Did something happen?”

He rubbed his head, which looked like a fuzzy dandelion flower. “I shaved it over the summer but decided to grow it.” Her smile vanished under closed lips, then reappeared.

“One last thing. This is delicate, but I need to know…” Her index finger pointed back and forth between the two, like a metronome. Riley looked at Mara and she at him. They giggled and she stood.

“I didn’t think so. Now I’m sure.”

She thanked them and showed herself out. The two roommates looked at each other.

“We failed.”

“Thank god!”

*

Peter, who didn’t offer a last name, was a philosophy major at USF. He wore a black hoodie and jeans and ipod earplugs. His black hair dripped over his head, extending to sideburns to the bottom of his ears and a goatee.

“Do you think it’s large enough?” Mara asked when she showed the room. He nodded, though he seemed absorbed in music coming through his earplugs. She couldn’t be sure who he was listening to.

When the three congregated in the kitchen, he darted into his seat as in musical chairs.

“So what do you think?” Riley asked.

“S’okay.” He said, staring first at one then the other.

“Do you have any questions for us?” Mara asked.

He shook his head.

“We’ll let you know after we interview the others.”

He nodded. They were escorting him out when he turned to ask how many people responded.

“Five.” Riley said.

He thought a moment, then left. As they heard his footsteps descending the carpeted stairwell, she turned to Riley.

“You lied.”

“A white one.”

“What if the last one doesn’t work out?”

“She can’t be worse.”

Recalling the e-mail from the third prospect, Mara wasn’t so sure. She was a twenty year old woman who was a student in Southern California with a full-time job in San Francisco. The contradiction made her head hurt.

*

But Sherry Wood was a pleasant surprise. Unlike the confusing e-mail, Mara found her straightforward. She was plump, stood a few inches taller than she, with long blonde hair, earnest brown eyes and a tentative smile. She showed up wearing black slacks and a pink sweater, and carrying an overnight bag. She saw them glance at the bag and laughed.

“I just got in from the airport. Please don’t think I’d impose.”

Her manner put them at ease and, as they got to know her, they thought she might be the one. Riley, though, noticed she avoided his eyes.

She told them she was going to the UC in Riverside but that she was taking off a year, and, through a connection, got an administrative job at a law firm. When Mara asked why she came to San Francisco, she answered, “It’s far enough and still close.” Noting their puzzled looks, she continued.

“I come from a fundamentalist family and I love my parents dearly. This would have been my junior year and I was going to declare for PolySci, but--”

She glanced at Riley.

“—-There’s a boy. Roger.”

“Your parents don’t approve?” Mara asked.

“They approve too much!”

Roger, she explained, attended her church and was an assistant manager at a supermarket. In the last two years they’d become a couple and marriage was likely. “I love him, and I’m happy—“

“But?”

She sighed. “The world is closing in too fast. I mean I see my mother, so joyful and content. Will I be, too? There’s so much in the world. Our faith parcels it into good and evil, but I have trouble being convinced everything we call evil is evil. Take music and dancing--”

“You don’t dance?” Mara’s eyes bulged.

“I have. I am of the modern world.”

“Don’t you listen to music?”

“Sometimes.”

With a wide grin and a tattletale voice, Riley said, “Mara sings in the kitchen.”

“I don’t mind. I just--“

Mara put her hand over Sherry’s, looking kindly into her distressed eyes. “You don’t need to say more.”

She looked grateful. “I just need to step away.”

Mara and Riley glanced at each other, signaling they’d make the offer, and were about to, when a cloud crossed Sherry’s face.

“There is one thing…”

Her family, while supportive, couldn’t fully grasp what she was going through. Though they agreed to the time away, they might balk if they learned she had a man as a roommate. For the second time, a puzzled look came over them. As Mara began to speak, Sherry asked, “'Riley' can be a girl’s name, can’t it?”

After some discussion, they agreed they wouldn’t let on Riley was a man, if they could help it. Sherry would use her cell to communicate with her parents and give Mara’s cell number as an emergency contact. She would discourage visits by going down south to visit her family.

“It doesn’t feel good, though, starting with a lie.”

“A white lie.” Mara said.

“The white whale of white lies.” Riley riffed, as he and Mara laughed.

Sherry flushed, looking doubtful, but their laughter was infectious. Starting in her belly, it advanced upwards until she joined in, and laughter was bouncing off the walls.


The persons and events in this story are fictitious and do not represent any living person or real event.

The next chapter will be posted July 11.