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earned in my entire lifetime.  Which, admittedly, wasn’t all that much.
    The driv er opened the door for me and I climbed out.  Alexander followed.  It felt definitively weird, to be standing in this place that was familiar but now entirely changed.  Alexander was like a giant sun, casting his tall, black-haired light onto the dingy and the mundane, recasting the world and my life with his brilliance.  As much as I might have questioned this little shared excursion, I found that I liked having him here with me.  I liked this contrast he provided: wealth and beauty where before there was none.
    I smiled at him because I couldn’t help myself.  He was gorgeous and a little out of place and wholly in the moment, as strange as that moment might have been.  And I loved him for it.  Loved.   No.  I backtracked on that overblown sentiment.  I found his accepting, I’m-with-you manner endearing.  Wildly so.  “This is it,” I said.
    He crooked his arm and smiled back at me.  “Shall we?”
    I linked my arm through his.  When we got to the door, I fumbled in my bag for my key, but b efore I could find it, the door-opening buzzer rang.  Eva.  She was expecting us, with eager anticipation, so it seemed.
    Alexander held the door open for me and we entered the somewhat-gloomy foyer where the little hospital-green mailboxes and their rusty keyholes took up almost the entirely of the left wall.  I hadn’t even gotten around to adding my name to Eva’s mailbox and as we walked past them I wondered if I ever would.  I found the realization that this, now, might never happen surprisingly appealing.
    The tiny elevator – smaller and much less plush than Alexander’s own private eleva tor, I couldn’t help contemplating – took us to the third floor.  The door to 3F was, unsurprisingly, open and filled with the excitable vision of Eva, who was dressed to the nines, in a blue wraparound dress, full makeup and carefully blow-dried hair.  I guess it was warranted; billionaires didn’t visit 3F all that often.
    And, while I was overjoyed to see my best friend, I couldn’t help feel a small flicker of competition.  She looked beautiful, as she always did.  She had dark, auburn-highlighted long hair, a willowy figure and an interesting if not textbook-pretty face, and she exuded a liveliness t hat most people were drawn to.  Alexander, however, was watching me.
    Eva’s eyes widened when she saw Alexander and she was, very uncharacteristically, momentarily speechless.
    “Eva, meet Alexander.   Alexander, my roommate, Eva.”
    Alexander took her hand and planted a kiss on the back of her knuckles in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly gesture.  She was positively gushing with excitement.  “Come in, Alexander.  It’s so nice to meet you.”
    Eva ushered us into the tiny apartment, which was as clean as I’d ever seen it, if still appearing more than a little run-down, especially after the extreme opulence I’d gotten accustomed to over the past three days.  Extreme opulence, I was finding, was very easy to adjust to.
    Eva froze as she noticed my boots, the ones Al exander had bought me at Barneys.  “Oh my fucking God, Lila.  Are those Balenciaga ?”  In fact they were.
    She was circling me, fingering th e new dress I was wearing, a thin film of pink cashmere, and the fur neckline of my outstanding new coat, which I’d left untied.  She laughed a little.  “Well, I have to say it.  My makeover barely scratched the surface.  Alexander’s, however, has completely transformed you.”
    I smiled back at her, think ing to myself that her comment might have been the understatement of the millennium.  I felt like an entirely different person to the half-dressed, virginal waif who’d bumbled my way to a random job interview last Thursday.
    “We can’t stay long,” I told her, suddenly feeling unusually confined in the tiny room.  The one small window gave an uninspiring view of a brown brick wall.