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two-family, was to the left of the landlady’s first-floor apartment. When you entered the building, whether you were heading up to Mary Ellen’s second-floor apartment or the landlady’s first-floor apartment, you had to first go through a main door and either head up the stairs in front of you to Mary Ellen’s, or take a quick left and walk into the landlady’s. This front door, leading into the building, was not supposed to be left unlocked.
    Unlike most dead-bolted doors, however, the door didn’t have a latch on the inside; it had a key lock, same as it did on the outside. The landlady was firm about this door being locked at all times, whether you were inside or out. “Always lock it, Mary Ellen,” she’d bark. “Never leave or return home without locking the dead bolt.”
    Not only was the lock illegal, but it posed a great danger if you were inside and couldn’t find your keys. There were no windows in the hallway leading up to Mary Ellen’s apartment, or downstairs near the entrance to the landlady’s apartment. “While my daughter came to visit with her baby once,” Mary Ellen said, “I ran out to the store. I came back, and she explained that she had wanted to get something from her car while I was gone, but couldn’t get out of the house.”
    It was a strange way to live. However, Mary Ellen overlooked the woman’s odd behavior because, compared to where she had come from, it was like living in a castle. What were a few rules? Even if she didn’t agree with them.

13
     
    I
     
    On Saturday night, August 1, 1987, Mary Ellen decided to get back into the swing of being single and head out on the town. She left her apartment around 7:00 P.M . and went to a singles dance. Dances were held in hotels and restaurants. A singles dance was a way, Mary Ellen always believed, to meet and schmooze with other people in the same position. It was safe. She wouldn’t have to go from bar to bar to meet new people. She could show up and feel a sense of empowerment that everyone at the dance was there for the same reason: to hook up.
    It had been a year since she last went out or even thought about attending a singles function. Two marriages down the drain. Her parents and, especially, her pious brother, the priest, were not happy about the way her life had turned out. But Mary Ellen trudged on in the face of such discouragement. It felt right going out to a dance. She was her own woman. This particular event was being held at a bar she liked: Kracker’s in Clifton, not too far from her apartment.
    To her amazement, when she walked in, she noticed there were about eighty people standing around, dancing, chatting, getting to know one another. Quite a large crowd to work her way through. As the night wore on, Mary Ellen talked with and danced—“I love to dance,” she said—with about four different men, none of whom seemed all that interesting. All was well, regardless. It wasn’t a total loss. She had a drink. It was a good time.
    And then she walked into the cocktail lounge to contemplate leaving. It was well after midnight. Standing in the doorway between the bar entrance and the ballroom, where the dance had been held, Mary Ellen thought it had been a fun night. Maybe she’d get back into the singles-dance scene again. Maybe not wait a year this time to start dating.
    Just as she was preparing to leave, a “very clean-cut, blond…very well-dressed, suit and tie, very neat” man made a gesture toward her. He was sitting at the bar and had just happened to turn around as she was about to walk out.
    “He was a wholesome-appearing person,” she said later.
    The music was loud. People were talking all around them. He had turned around on his bar stool and whispered, “Hello,” making a funny face.
    Mary Ellen noticed him right away.
    She laughed. He seemed charming, even from so far away. He was working for her attention—and she liked it.
    So she walked over to where he was sitting and sat down.