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again. While hardly the stuff of Hallmark cards, it worked, or at least, it had until recently.
    In a moment of weakness Stephen and I had bought an apartment together, a once-palatial Lake Shore residence in one of the city’s premier buildings that had fallen into disrepair. Perhaps I’d mistaken my love for the apartment (which, even in shambles, was almost heartbreakingly beautiful) for affection for the man, or maybe I’d secretly hoped that it would bring us closer together. Instead, the strain of undertaking the massive and expensive renovation had only seemed to etch the empty spaces in our relationship into sharper relief.
    Of course, the lawsuits didn’t help. The new apartment occupied the top two floors of a landmark David Adler building on East Lake Shore Drive. Unfortunately, we did not discover until after we’d begun replastering that there was a structural problem with the roof—specifically the thousands of tons of dirt, grass, and trees that our downstairs neighbor had put on top of it to construct a rooftop play area for his children. He’d erected an impressive urban oasis, a sylvan aerie in the very heart of the city. Unfortunately, it was also about to come crashing down through our ceiling.
    The downstairs neighbor in question was Paul Riskoff, the abrasive and notoriously combative real estate tycoon. When negotiations broke down, we’d been forced to file a lawsuit against him and obtain a court order allowing us to remove the hazard on the roof. We’d also taken separate actions against the city building inspector who’d initially granted the permit allowing Riskoff to construct the garden (no doubt after his palm had been generously greased), the inspector we’d hired who had failed to detect the problem before closing, and the entire condo board who’d thus far sided with Riskoff. Naturally, none of this had endeared us to our future neighbors.
    Since then we’d made steady progress renovating the apartment, and while I still had faith that it would be stunning when all the work was finally completed, I had recently found myself wondering, without any great sense of tragedy, which of us was going to end up moving into it once the last of the paint had dried.
    I pulled into the alley behind the Hyde Park apartment I still shared with my roommate and reflected that it had been more than a long day. I was glad to be home. The apartment had originally been Claudia’s, rented the day she arrived from New York to begin her surgical residency at the University of Chicago. It was a huge, rambling wreck of a place, reduced to near tenement status by a succession of student renters and in no way improved during our stewardship. The floor tilted wildly, and there were only three windows that opened and closed in the whole Place. It hadn’t been cleaned since our last cleaning lady quit more than a year earlier.
    I unlocked the door and checked the front hall for signs of Claudia’s diminutive sneakers, which she invariably kicked off the instant she walked through the door. Unsurprisingly the mat was empty. Now that she was pursuing a fellowship in trauma surgery at Northwestern Memorial, she’d begun spending nearly all her time at the hospital. Still, I was surprised by how disappointed I was to find her not at home. I was more than just physically tired; I was feeling emotionally exhausted and I really didn’t want to be alone.
    I jumped at the sound of the telephone and hurried across the living room to answer it. By the time I reached; the receiver, the adrenaline was already starting to flow. No one calls with good news at two o’clock in the morning.
    I picked it up.
    “Hi, Kate. It’s me, Jeff. I need a favor.” It was his usual greeting. During the day it was Chrissy who called. These nocturnal communications were Jeff’s specialty.
    They’d started almost as soon as Chrissy and Jeff had gotten back from their honeymoon. After all, I was more than just Chrissy’s best friend,