“Good night.”

“Night.”

I disappear into my apartment, shut the door, lock it. Cindy’s shadow passes by outside the frosted glass. “Who were you talking to?” Cindy asks, and I hesitate inside my door before turning on my hall light.

“Holly.”

“Why?”

I move away from the door. I don’t need to hear more. My apartment’s got a great big bay window with lovely crown molding, but it’s also got Cindy, and I don’t like living beneath her apartment. It’s okay if I can hear her music, but she doesn’t want to hear mine. She can have guests, a wild party, but I have to get permission before I have anyone stay overnight (like who would be overnighting?). She gets three parking spots, and I get the street. I know it’s her building, but maybe that’s the problem—it’s her building. It’s her everything. I’m paying a fortune, and yet I don’t even feel as if I belong here.

In my kitchen with the cute little table in front of the window, I stand there and look around. The kitchen’s fine, everything’s fine, and yet I don’t know what I’m doing in San Francisco. I’m not a city person. I’m a small-town, angle-parking, everybody-knows-me kind of person.

I grew up riding my Schwinn bike with the plastic floral basket on the handlebar down Main Street, waving to everybody I knew, and I knew a lot of people. We bought our cakes at Bothof’s Bakery, medicine at Main Drug, shoes at Dick Parker’s, stationery at Togni Branch. It was a one-horse town, and I loved it. People knew me.

And then, when my dramatic whirlwind marriage to the handsome foreign husband fell apart, people knew. Too many people knew. Which is what drove me out of the valley and into the city. Too many people knew me, and every one of them had an opinion.

No one thought I’d get married and divorced in less than ten months. No one thought I’d be the one unable to honor a commitment.

Least of all me.

I strip off my clothes in my bedroom, and just when I’m naked, the doorbell rings.

With a robe wrapped around me, I answer the door. Cindy.

I open the door, smile my tired, tight smile that I only know how to smile anymore. “Hi.”

“Holly.”

Is she mad at me? I open the door wider, when I want to shut it in her face. “Want to come in?”

“No.”

We look at each other for a long minute. Cindy’s five years older than me. She went to Stanford. She’s a successful money manager. In fact, she makes a lot of money. She’s attractive in a serious, hard-ass kind of way, and she’s got Drew, Mr. Fit, and I don’t know why she doesn’t like me better.