How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley Read Free Book Online Page B

with suburbia and my call time at my first job, which remained stubbornly at eight-thirty a.m. ten months into it. I couldn’t keep waking up before sunrise to get to the train station, deactivating the alarm in my parents’ house like I was in high school. It wasn’t him, he had to understand, it was me. Maybe we could, you know, try to see other roommates. Fortunately, Mac accepted this. But it was too late. I had watched all my other viable roommate options, those vetted by the four-year background check called “college,” chip off the real estate glacier. I was stranded. So I turned to that mecca of desperation, the Internet. But instead of tormenting myself with panoramic videos of views I’d never witness from balconies I’d never stand on, I went on Craigslist and found Nell.
    Nell was a closet anorexic and a casual kleptomaniac. Neither affliction you’d think would be a problem when considered carefully. For starters, I’d never have to worry about her eating my food. Indeed, on more than one occasion I’d be brushing my teeth and she’d appear in the bathroom door with two versions of the same product in each hand.
    “See, my peanut butter has more carbs”—she’d raise one container like a barbell, her parenthesis of an arm muscle straining from the process—“but your peanut butter has more saturated fat.”
    Our refrigerator was becoming a condiment ark. We had two of just about everything. It was like we were kosher but instead of doing it out of piety, we were doing it out of hostility. I would turn to face her in slow motion, still brushing. And she’d wait for my reaction. Wait, brush, wait, brush. Until I’d spit and say something through the toothpaste foam like “That’s a solid point you make” or “Yeah, I’m thinking about switching.”
    What can I say? Anorexics are very neat, and they pay their bills on time.
    The kleptomania had also not been cause for concern. At least not at first.
    A. None of my clothes would fit her without the aid of belts or a staple gun.
    B. Her thievery was so open, I never had that panicky feeling that I’d left a sweater in the bar or lost it to the dry cleaner. A quick peek in her room would reveal the item, cuffs rolled up, laid tidily on her bed.
    But what I hadn’t taken into account were accessories. Nary a woman has bloated earlobes. Handbags, in particular, are one-size-fits-all.
    The result was a lot of conversations that went like this:
    “Nell, is that my necklace?”
    “Yes,” she’d say, touching her neck to confirm the fact.
    “Where did you find it?”
    “In your jewelry box.”
    It seemed ironic that someone who adamantly eschewed all street foods could possess such sticky fingers. If I bought clothing, I’d sneak the bags into the apartment. If I left for the weekend, I’d drop off my laundry at the laundromat beforehand to get my stuff off the premises. When Nell took a shine to my loofah, I started using a plastic shower caddy, which I made a big show of escorting from my bedroom to the bathroom each morning. Instead of growing into my first year of adulthood, I was reverting back to freshman year of college. It was a futon mentality.
    Thus commenced a passive-aggressive note-leaving campaign in which I found myself doling out unwelcome life advice like the old man in the Werther’s Original commercials. Timmy, sometimes, when people own things, they like to keep track of them. And sharing is different from stealing, even if, as you say, I wasn’t here to ask.... We’re not possession-renouncing monks, Timmy, much as we’d like to be.
    Alas, the notes fell on deaf ears. Deaf ears with my earrings sticking through them. I found myself storing my grandmother’s pendants in half-empty jars of fatty peanut butter.
    Then came my big break. Nell packed up her Purell and her Luna bars and left for a monthlong trip to Nepal to find herself spiritually. I felt as if I’d won an all-expenses-paid, all-nude-all-the-time