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they visited, she realized how little she knew about her housemates. She’d had a drink with Jami just that once, but Jami hadn’t confided in her; they had simply discussed the possibility of Sally’s moving in.
    Now Steve seemed to be on edge. He and Jami were arguing listlessly about something at his work, when he suddenly turned to Sally and said, “You think you’re too good for us, don’t you, Sally? You never bring your friends over to meet us.”
    She stared at him, sure that he must be kidding. She worked with a number of celebrities, but there was no reason to introduce them to Steve. She didn’t socialize with them very much herself. She just worked for them.
    Jami looked embarrassed and told Steve to mind his own business. As Sally watched them, stunned, the couple’s comments grew louder until they were yelling at each other.
    “It very, very quickly escalated into a fight—an all-out brawl,” Sally recalled. “They were screaming and shouting at each other. Glass was breaking.”
    As small as she was, Jami stood up to Steve. “This is it!” she screamed. “This is it. It’s over!”
    Steve made a move toward Jami and said, breathing heavily, “Shut the fuck up! I’ll kill you.”
    Horrified, Sally ran to grab the phone in her bedroom, but first she pushed Jami behind a table in the hallway to give her a little protection from Steve, who was trying to get to her, swinging his arms and swearing.
    Sally did manage to connect with 911 and let out a cry for help, but then she rushed out of her room to see that Steve was holding a kitchen knife. He had an odd, almost vacant look on his face. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled at Jami. “I’ll kill both of you.” He was either drunk or crazy—and it had happened so rapidly.
    Sally believed him, but she could hear sirens approaching the mobile home park. She grabbed her cat and tossed it into her room. She didn’t know how she could help Jami, but she was going to try. For the moment, Steve couldn’t reach Jami where she huddled behind the table.
    With a sharp flick of his wrist, he turned the knife so that it pointed toward his own belly.
    “Steve!” Jami cried. “Don’t!”
    There was no expression on Steve’s face as he slid the knife into his flesh. Sally thought it must have been some sleight of hand until she saw blood burst from his belly. She was amazed that he was still on his feet, and then he disappeared. She wasn’t sure just how he got out of the trailer. By that time, both she and Jami were screaming and hysterical.
    Jami talked to the police. They found Steve, put him in an ambulance, and took him away.
    Sally Kirwin was so shocked that all she could think of was getting away from the madness. She went to a friend’s house. “I came back in the wee hours of the morning,” she recalled. “No one was there.”
    Now she could see the damage. The bedroom door was broken, and she could see that Steve had knocked the glass out of several windows. The desert wind blew through the mobile home, the only sound left after all the crashing and splintering of glass and wood.
    Sally didn’t know Steve Sherer well enough to know if he’d had some kind of psychotic break or if this was how he behaved when he was drunk or mad, or both. One minute they had been having a routine conversation and the next, he was white with rage.
    Around dawn, Jami came home. She had dark circles under her swollen eyes, and she seemed very contrite. “This wouldn’t have happened,” she told Sally, “if Steve didn’t love me so much.”
    Sally stared at Jami, dumbfounded. “Aren’t you going to leave him?” she asked.
    Jami shook her head. “He just loves me so much—we can work it out. It will never happen again.”
    Sally tried to reason with Jami, and she suggested places she could go where she would be safe. Sally said her friend had volunteered to take Jami in until she could get home to her family. Jami looked at her as if Sally didn’t