Gabby sat Lulu down at their kitchen table.

“What’s wrong?” Lulu asked. “You look worked up.”

“What’s wrong is that you need to start respecting me as your roommate.” 

“Of course I respect you, girl.”

“Stop calling me girl. I’m not your girl. I’m done, Lulu. You never clean. You take my makeup. I come home and my clothes are on the floor, things are missing. Things I need.”

“You have great style, roommates borrow each other’s clothes.”

“Do roommates return those clothes covered in pee? Do roommates hit on each other’s dads?”

“That was obviously a joke.”

“No it wasn’t Lulu and you know that. My mom was so uncomfortable.”

“Wow, you’re getting really mad,” Lulu said with a smile.

“Yeah I am! Things have to change around here. One, you start cleaning. Two, you never go in my room. Three, you move the fucking chair.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“Yeah, we have, and I said that if I’m not allowed to sit in the chair that you can’t keep it in the living room.”

“It’s a statement piece, okay? I’m sorry you’re frustrated, but you can’t just steamroll me because you are stubborn and upset.”

“Also, I don’t want to see you talking to Carl ever again.”

Lulu laughed. “I’m looking out for you here, but Carl comes on to me, okay? Ever since the threesome—”

“Do not bring up the fucking threesome,” Gabby said.

“Ever since then, he DMs me all the time. It’s honestly creepy.”

“Shut up Lulu. Just shut up.”

“I’m sorry hun but, like, you were the one who wanted to talk okay? Honestly I think you should just take a beat and calm down. You’re sweating.”

Gabby looked at Lulu for a moment and shook her head. “You are literally the worst fucking person I have ever met,” she said. 

The next day all of her things were gone from the apartment and she had poured a bottle of red wine all over the ‘statement piece’ white chaise lounge in the living room.

 

A few weeks later Lulu was sitting in the living room with her new boyfriend. 

“I did everything I could to try and live with her but she made it impossible,” she said. “She was just a negative person.” Lulu and Conner had been hooking up for a while but after Gabby left, Lulu let it become official and he just finished moving in. 

“She sounds like a bitch,” Conner said.

“Wow don’t be mean, I just lost a friend.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t believe she treated you like that. You were just being a considerate roommate and she acted so crazy.”

“I’d prefer you not to use words like bitch and crazy, when you talk about women, but you are right. At a certain point you just have to cut that type of negative energy out of your life.”

“Not everyone is as sweet as me,” he said.

“Or as hot,” she responded and got on top of him. 

After that Conner and Lulu lived in bliss. When Conner got home from work, he kissed Lulu on the forehead and they cooked, or went on walks, or took molly and went to dance at Basement and fucked in a corner and then ate pancakes at a diner as they were coming down. 

Conner did the shopping and made the bed every morning and did the dishes. He bought the toothpaste when they ran out and he cleaned up after Lulu, no matter how big a mess she made, and he never whined about it. He seemed to enjoy it even, and Lulu was very content for a time. 

But then Conner got a call from his dad who said he was sick or something and he locked himself in the bathroom and cried. Lulu thought this was sort of sweet at first but then it kept happening and it got to be a bit much. He came home with a sad, tired look on his face and he was always looking at his phone.

One night they were watching a show and Lulu had taken an edible and was stoned out of her mind and out of nowhere Conner gasped and started bawling next to her. He grabbed her shoulders and pressed his wet face into her shirt.

“What are you doing?” She asked, rigid, shifting away from him.

He looked up at her sniffling. “What do you mean?”

“I mean like, are you going to just…Nevermind,” she said. She got up and went into their room and scrolled through Instagram, lying in bed. She was so stoned she forgot why she was in there until Conner came in. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. She scrolled some more, ignoring him. He sighed and looked at the wall. 

She put her phone down. “Conner I’m not your therapist, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, his voice wet with tears. 

“Come here,” she said. 

She turned away from him and let him spoon her and kiss her back while she kept scrolling. 

She thought he might get over it but then the next night he got home from work still red eyed and sniffling and she was immediately annoyed. She asked if he was ready to go. 

“What?”

“We’re going to Elsewhere,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Did you tell me about this?”

“Of course I did. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to but I’m going okay? You can do whatever you want.” 

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s go, I really want to go.”

At the bar Conner drank and took some molly with her but it came off as desperate. She found a group of girls she knew and screamed and ran over to dance with them. She was having fun but when she saw Conner floating around the outside of the group, watching her, desperately trying to stay near to her, it was honestly gross. She sank deeper into the dance floor until she couldn’t see him, until she forgot he was there at all. She danced for hours with some girl who ended up fingering her, and when she finally got out it was three-thirty in the morning and she found Conner sitting on a ledge with his face in his hands. 

She ordered an uber and when they got home, she was still high and fucked him and he was desperate, which made it good. 

When they were lying next to each other after, Lulu said, “I know it’s hard to hear but, your dad isn’t dead, Conner. It’s only a big deal because you’re making it a big deal.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Will you do something for me?” She asked. 

“Anything Lulu,” he squeezed her.

”Never apologize to me like that ever again,” she said. “Seriously, just be a fucking man.”

 

Lulu thought maybe that would be the last time they would have sex, but surprisingly, Conner seemed to get it after that. From that day on he didn’t cry in front of her or bring up his dad and she almost never saw him sad or contemplative. It was like she fucked the grief out of him or something.

He came home from work happy and kept the apartment clean. He did whatever Lulu told him, but not in a desperate way and they started having fun together again.

They tried all the bakeries in their neighborhood.

They got wasted drinking martinis on their roof and then drove to Coney Island to watch the sunrise, though they woke up in the car at noon having missed it entirely. Neither of them recalled how they got there, and they were glad they hadn’t gotten pulled over. 

They played ping pong in the park and she sucked his dick in the woods after, and then they went home and cuddled and watched Love Island until she fell asleep in his arms. 

She got sick and Conner gave her a bell that she could ring and have him to do whatever she wanted, but this pissed her off. It made her feel like a domineering bitch. She didn’t talk to him for a whole week until she finally rang the bell and made him go down on her and then she dropped the bell in the trash after that.

Lulu never expected anyone to accept her like Conner did. When he got home from work, she felt a warm release. A sort of flush. What was that? It made her frantic, this tranquil feeling, and she got suspicious. 

She took Conner’s phone and read his texts, responding to them for him and when his parents or friends called, she picked up. 

“Hello? This is Lucy…No…No…. Sorry he can’t come to the phone right now,” she said and he had to call his father back later and apologize. 

Lulu waited to see if he would react but he never did.

His dad sent him postcards and when he put them up on the fridge, Lulu pulled them off and threw them in the trash so he ended up saving them in a ziplock bag under their bed.

At Lulu’s suggestion, they went to Green-Wood cemetery. They wandered around arm in arm, but then as Conner was looking at Boss Tweed’s grave, he turned around and Lulu was gone. In the parking lot the car was gone too, which was perturbing because Lulu didn’t have a license and she had been wearing his coat, which had his phone, wallet and keys. When he finally got back to their apartment three hours later she was watching TV. 

She told him he had picked up the car from the impound, that she had crashed it into a bike rack, but the cops let her go because of the minimal property damage and her emotional distress. 

“But why did you leave in the first place?” Conner asked.

“You don’t get it,” she said. “I thought about death. Like I really thought about it Conner.”

Conner didn’t really understand what she meant but he believed her.

“Can you come home sometime soon?” Conner’s parents asked him over FaceTime and he said that he would as soon as he could. He said that he really missed them and that he loved them so much but that he was really busy. 

They asked after Lulu. They said they were worried about him. They said they didn’t like how strange she was and how distant he had become, but they said they trusted him. 

“You have always been such a straight shooter Conner. Ever since you were a boy. You have such a good head on your shoulders pal… Anyone you’re in love with must be someone special.” 

Conner smiled. “She’s really special.”

 

A few days later Conner came home after work to find Lulu in a fight with the super outside their apartment. She had her phone out, filming him.

“It’s in the lease, get those fucking animals out of here,” the super said.

“They’re emotional support,” she said. Apparently Lulu had brought home four kittens from a shelter.

“What’s going on?” Conner said. 

“Four hours I’ve been dealing with this bitch.”

“Woah watch it buddy,” Conner said, getting between them.

“Just because you’re a pathetic loser doesn’t mean you can speak to me that way,” Lulu yelled over Conner’s shoulder. 

The super tried to grab at her. 

“Fuck off,” Conner said, pushing him back. 

“Yeah fuck you,” Lulu yelled.

The super was furious now. He ran up and shoved Conner to the ground as hard as he could. 

Lulu backed into the doorway, “I got that on camera dickhead.”

The super lunged at her but she shut the door. He pounded and punched. “Fuck! God fuckin dammit!” He yelled. He turned around and kicked Conner in the stomach and stomped away. 

“He had it out for me,” Lulu said later that night, coddling a kitten. “He should never have worked with people in the first place, a violent man like that. Thank god they fired him.”

“Why did you get four of them?” Conner asked, looking down and the cats, stumbling at his feet. 

“They’re siblings,” she said. “I’m not the government Conner. I can’t rip families apart.”

“You’re right,” he said.

Lulu got bored with the kittens quickly and a few days later Conner found one of them dead in its little bed. They had a lily in the house which are apparently toxic and the poor little one had gotten too close. He wrapped the tiny body in a few coffee filters and put it in the compost and then took the other three cats to a rescue. Lulu wasn’t fazed.

When he got back to the house, he kissed Lulu on the forehead and sat down to read on the couch. She stood by the fridge drinking a glass of milk and watched him. The warm flush came again and, with it, a wave of anxiety. It didn’t make sense, him sitting there, his mind on nothing but the book he was reading after he just threw away a kitten corpse for her. What will it take? She thought. 

She brought her glass of milk to the height of her head and then dropped it and, without thinking, stomped her foot down on the broken glass as hard as she could. A shard stabbed deep into her heel, the blood spurting, swirling quickly into the puddle of milk. 

Conner rushed over, “Oh my god, Lulu, what happened?” 

She didn’t answer. Through her tears she watched his face. She watched him as he picked her up and carried her to the couch, as he looked at the wound and picked out the glass. As he carried her to the bathroom and cleaned the wound and as he called the uber to the hospital. She watched him as he got her a wheelchair at the ER and as he held her hand when they took the x-rays. She watched him as he talked to the doctor, making sure they gave her the right drugs and she watched him as he carried her to the uber home and finally brought her upstairs and tucked her into bed. 

The next night Conner got home from work late and when he opened the door most of Lulu’s clothes were on the floor in the bedroom and the kitchen was a mess. Lulu was standing there in a short black skirt, sheer camisole and a full-length brown fur coat. 

“I’m going out,” she said, makeup thick on her eyelashes.

He looked around, confused. “Where are you going?”

“Out, Conner.”

“What about your foot,” he said. 

She laughed. “It’s fine,” she said and limped out of the room.

At three in the morning Conner woke up to the sound of Reiki music blasting. He walked into the living room and Lulu was on the floor, arms and legs outstretched, lit candles outlining her body. There was a small pool of blood at her foot from the broken stitches. She was breathing deep, humming to the music, but the bottom of her coat was catching fire from a candle. The synthetic hair was crackling, smoking up the room. Conner watched for a moment to see if she would notice, but she kept humming, the fire spreading. He hurried over and poured water on it. 

“Lulu,” he called, but the Reiki music was too loud so he turned it off. But Lulu didn’t seem to notice. He wanted to clean her up and get her foot taken care of.

“Lulu, are you okay?” He asked.

“Hmm?” she opened her eyes and looked up at him like she just noticed that he was there. “Oh yeah, I’m fine.”

“Do you want me to help you? To clean you up and get you into bed?”

“I’m fine Conner. Just go to bed.” 

“Okay,” he said and he went back into the bedroom. He stayed up and twenty minutes later when Lulu was asleep, he blew out the candles and put a blanket on her.

The next day, right when Conner got to work Lulu sent him a picture of her foot. She was wearing a white sock and a red stain spread out over the white fabric. The message said, “it hurts.” 

He sighed. He put his phone face down and tried to answer emails. He was behind at work and had been struggling to keep up. 

His phone buzzed again after five minutes. 

“Where are you?” another message said. He flipped it over again. 

After another five minutes he got a call and he quickly picked it up. “What?” he asked.

But it wasn’t Lulu. 

It was his mother. She was crying. 

He suddenly felt tired.

Through her tears she told him that his dad had passed.

 

When he got back to the apartment late that morning, Lulu was standing there in the middle of the room. She was wearing white socks over black stockings and the skirt from the night before. The room still smelled from the burnt coat.

“I think it opened again,” she said. 

He picked her up and she draped her arm over his shoulder as he brought her to the couch. He pulled off her sock and then reached under her skirt and pulled down her stockings so he could see the cut.

“Does it look bad?” she asked. 

The cut was a jagged L shape and the top three stitches had ripped out. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s pretty deep.”

“I know,” she said. But then she laughed and he laughed too. 

He looked up at her. His eyes adjusted to a heavy light suddenly pouring through the window, falling on Lulu. Her mascara was smudged under her eyes and orange plasma oozed from her cut, dripping down her foot. She smiled down at him guardedly, trying to hide her pain but appealing to him with it at the same time. His head was swimming. His phone buzzed in his pocket but he didn’t pick it up. 

He went and grabbed the disinfectant and bandages the doctor gave them. He cleaned the cut and wrapped it and Lulu grabbed his wrist, squeezing and laughing when it hurt. 

When he finished wrapping her foot, with her stockings off, Lulu spread her legs. 

“While you’re down there,” she said and raised both her eyebrows suggestively. They both laughed. 

“But seriously,” Lulu said after a moment, raising her eyebrows again.

“I’m serious,” Conner said.