It had been three weeks. There was no way to know for sure if Nate’s schedule was the same. It was just an assumption, an educated guess, a plausible hypothesis. She had no reason to believe that his routine had changed. As often as she had quizzed their mutual friends, no one said anything about him switching jobs. Either they were all in cahoots and lying, unlikely, or it was true that he still had the same routine as always. “It has to be true,” Molly murmured as she resumed a more calm but still somewhat sad coziness.

A few minutes later, she forced herself up from the bed—a feat more difficult in this bed than any other she’d ever slept in. A large groove in the center consumed her 5-foot 2-inch, 120-pound frame. Someone much bigger than her had made the indentation, or rather, the canyon. To get up, she literally had to claw at the bottom sheet. At least that was hers. Nate let her take the soft, jersey bottom sheet with her even though it was part of a set his mother had bought him.

Once seated at the edge of the bed, her comfy, nearly worn-out, yellow-striped pajama pants hung widely down around her feet. Another remnant from Nate’s mother. She had bought them for her 4 years ago for Christmas. The hems were now grayed and frayed. The butt pilled. The elastic waistband stretched. But it didn’t matter. There was no one to impress. She finally lived alone.

Over the last 8 months of their relationship, she and Nate had fought a lot. In the momentum of these late-in-the-game fights, she would accuse him of cheating her out of the freedom of living alone, of her independence. More and more often this was the first bullet in her arsenal of his wrongs. “I never had the freedom most women have before settling down. And don’t play it off like it’s nothing. It’s why women cheat. It’s why 40-year-old women dress like 16-year-olds. Not that I would do any of those things, but I’m just saying. You took my youth,” she would cry.

“You aren’t making any sense! I never asked you to give me anything. And, by the way, I never sowed my wild oats, either. I gave you my wild oats!” he would rebut.

“Yes, and that scares the living shit out of me!” she would say. A pang of guilt and guttural sincerity punctured her fight. Gone were the sensational dysphemisms. This was how she really felt. And so she would then pucker and hiccup with tears. And then he would hug her. And then it would be ok.

Until one day when he ruined it all.

“You are so paranoid, so annoying. You have pushed me to the point that I don’t love you anymore. It’s over, you fucking psycho,” he said crying from his side of the bed. He also called her obsessive, possessive, vain and tyrannical. He said she acted like Saddam Hussein, like King Jong-Il, that she was a crazy, paranoid dictator. Whether it was meaningless hate spouted from a geyser of his anger or full of meaning from a deluge of his real feelings, it didn’t matter. That was it. His gush of horrible words sunk into her system and pumped through her over and over again like cancerous blood. “I don’t love you.” “It’s over.” She deserved someone who she could trust to love her unconditionally and at all times. She decided she had to leave him.

Within three days of those utterances, she took a break from an unusually laborious freelance web development project and actually, finally, relievingly, scarily searched craigslist for affordable studio apartments in her neighborhood.

http://newyork.craigslist.org/

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/

apts / housing
all apartments (includes by-owner + no-fee broker + fee broker)
“Park Slope” Rent min: $0 Rent max: $800 0+ BR
Search

Forty-seven results were found. But each one was a sliver of false advertising. The location misrepresented. The number of bedrooms wrong. The rent inaccurate. Not one real result for an apartment in her price range in her neighborhood.

Greg, just arriving home late from work, lit up. Something was wrong. Fireworks of adrenaline and testosterone exploded underneath his skin. He grimaced. His toes curled in his shoes. His fingers shook as they struggled to fit the key in the front door just right so it would turn—“Fucking thing, turn!” he yelled. And the door opened up. His feet were numb. He barreled up to the third floor two steps at a time. His quads burned. His lips pursed.

The climb gave him just enough time to think. When he got to the door he would rush in to the apartment. He would be prepared for anything. Prepared for, prepared for, prepared for what? He didn’t know what. Why would his stuff be on the curb? Was she breaking up with him? But some of the stuff wasn’t just his. It was theirs. Was she moving? Is a robber in there? But wouldn’t a robber immediately put the stuff in a car or in a bag or away somewhere?

Once on the landing in front of the door, he turned the knob and threw himself in the room with such force it was as though he had just broken the door down with his shoulder. He stood in the main room and refueled with a deep inhale as he surveyed the situation—the room, which accounted for most of the apartment, seemed half empty.

The couch, coffee table and TV, Wii, Xbox 360, and Blu-Ray player were still there. The TV was on. They hadn’t been robbed. The tchotchkes and New Yorker magazines from the coffee table were gone. About half of the books on the bookshelf were missing. But this simply made it look like an orderly bookshelf. The closet, tall, narrow and the only one in the apartment, in which they kept their work clothes, coats, personal finance files and sheets, was open. Like the bookshelf, it was orderly, clean and half-empty. The throw over the couch was gone. All of their DVDs were gone. Greg noticed Marshmallow, their Shih-Tzu, yelping at his feet just like normal. “Julie?”

In between barks he heard their shower curtain pull open. He put his keys down on the end table, where their sunglasses used to be, and took the three steps to the bathroom.

“Hon?” The door was partly open. His adrenaline ebbed and flowed unsure of what he might find. He peaked around it slowly.

And then he saw her. Julie, his wife to-be, was sitting on the edge of the tub holding a half-used bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo plus conditioner. Hair was falling out of her ponytail and around her face. The soft skin around her eyes was swollen. She roughly wiped her nose on a bath towel.

“Is it worth keeping this? I used to bring this with me to the gym. But I don’t go there so much anymore now that it’s nice outside. So I don’t really use it. But I don’t want to waste it. I think I’m emotionally attached to it. I don’t know what to do.” And then she erupted into tears ready to share the burden she had been facing all by herself. “Thank god you’re here.”

She was safe. Marshmallow was unconcerned. A shampoo bottle?

“Woah. Woah, woah, woah, woah. What the fuck is going on here?” The scene outside on the curb seemed so extreme, so dire, so acute. A shampoo bottle?

“Greg, I’m nipping it in the bud.” she said cryptically.

Unsure what she meant or how she would interpret anything he said, Greg decided to get more data. “Nipping what in the bud?”

“I’m nipping it in the bud, Greg. Nipping it in the bud.” She answered.

Jessica, 23, was asleep on her 6-year-old futon bed that was pushed tightly into a corner of her one-room kitchen, living room and bedroom. Now there’s not much you can learn about someone from watching them sleep. But since you’ve never met Jessica, I’ll try to use this idle—albeit important—moment to introduce her. She had turned off the lights and gotten into bed around 11:30, and she had fallen asleep by midnight. Her first episode of REM had already concluded, and she had shifted positions once to avoid sleeping on a cold spot of drool. Her alarm would ring at 7:16. Her choice of the seemingly random time helped her sleep. The unrounded number stopped her from nourishing insomnia by calculating exactly how much sleep she’d get before work the next day. Mental math was discouragingly harder to do without round numbers. Work was advertising sales for Cosmopolitan magazine—not usually a hard sell, but getting more difficult given the new media revolution and the recession.

The wall behind Jessica’s crown of tousled auburn hair was shared with a woman she’d never met face-to-face: Stephanie, a 24-year-old bartender who worked at the known-rowdy Coyote Ugly bar. But Stephanie wasn’t a real rowdy one. Yes, she could hold her own in a New York-style yelling match, and she could produce flirtatious smiles that appeared realistic even to the most homely, disgruntled men. But she was actually quite tame and bright, and stereotypically beautiful enough (stick straight blonde hair, acne-free skin and a 32D frame) that she never needed to partake in any more questionable activities to make rent. The most questionable activity in recent memory took place tonight with the delivery from Indian restaurant Taj Mahal Delight.

Bustling home from work, her high heels pounded the pavement like quick, single blows of a jackhammer. “I can hold it. I can hold it,” she chanted to herself as her stomach cramped and gurgled. The barback, who she had a major crush on, had suggested getting Indian as a late-night snack. Stephanie had never tried Indian and lived on a bland diet of ramen noodles, sushi, salads and the occasional pizza slice. But the self-consciousness resurrected by a cute boy, resembling that which plagues most junior high school girls trying to mold themselves into the most popular girl, inspired her to say, “I’ve been dying to try Indian!”

Before she got to her front door, she had her key in hand ready to go. Then with a twist of the wrist and a fast tromp up three flights of stairs, she made it home. Her purple leather purse dropped from her hand onto her bed as she rushed to undo the button of her jeans and get to the toilet. And then she let herself release and push. Just like a woman in labor, she thought, as she let one rip.

The sleeping Jessica sprung up to a sitting position as though the fire alarm had gone off. But before jumping out of bed and worriedly, frustratingly evaluating the public wear-ability of her pajamas (flannel pants and a worn out T-shirt), she paused to make sense of the situation. Then she heard the toilet flush.