Two weeks later, and Linda’s shoes were clean, her blouse repaired and the buttons painstakingly reattached after the detective had returned them to her, still in the evidence baggies. Almost everything was normal.

Except Patricia had moved in.

“I just can’t sleep alone since that robbery,” Patrica had moaned.

It was two nights after the event. Patricia had kicked in Linda’s door and dragged in two bright purple suitcases, at least five plastic grocery bags filled with God-only-knew and a shoe rack.

Linda dropped her fists back down to her sides and slowly exhaled through her nostrils.

“I don’t want to be around any of my lovers, they don’t understand, you know?” Patricia continued. She dropped all of her bags to the living room floor and knocked over a vase. “But you were there Linda, and you understand and I think maybe you were way more affected by it all than me, you know? Like, that dude just ripped off your bra like that. And besides, I feel better when I’m around someone who needs my protection, you know?”

Linda did not. She still did not know how Patricia thought she could protect Linda. Except, maybe the reoccurring dreams of Linda drowning in the robber’s familiar eyes weren’t as disorienting when she could hear Patricia’s snores reverberating through the apartment.

Still. Linda did not agree with Patricia moving in. She did not agree to the rotation of sleeping on her bed for one week, then her couch the next week. She did not agree with the way Patricia groaned, cursed, and farted in her sleep. And she certainly did not agree to Patricia eating ice cream straight out of the carton and dripping it all over the couch.

“He still has your bra you know,” Patricia said around mouthfuls of ice cream one night.

Linda had been standing over the sink, gripping its edges in order to prevent herself from gripping Patricia’s neck. She looked over her shoulder at Patricia.

Patricia sat up and leaned over the back of the couch, a conspirator inspiring her crony. “Doesn’t that just burn you? He’s probably got it in his pocket or bunched up next to his dick. It’s probably all wrinkly and sweaty from him.” Patricia’s face screwed up in disgust. “I mean, shit, bras are expensive and have one purpose. And here he is, wasting it! That’s really got to bother you, I mean, how much did you spend on it?”

Linda turned back to the sink and chewed her lip.

Patricia was right. It did bother Linda to think that her twenty-nine dollar and thirty-five cents bra was being used against its function. It bothered her more than she had needed to wear the same bra every day since the robbery. It was unhygienic and threw off her washing schedule.

“And you know what’s probably the worst about it?” Patricia climbed off from the couch, accidentally dropping her ice cream carton on the rug. “He probably jacks off with it!”

Linda did not agree with Patricia.

The worst about it — about the missing bra, about being defrocked in front of her coworkers, about having the whole experience of being robbed— the worst was having to live with Patricia. With having to find Patricia’s dirty socks strewn all over the couch or hidden beneath the blankets on Linda’s bed. To find the dishes unwashed, the food scraps molding on the countertops, the recycling mashed in with the garbage, the makeup strewn over the bathroom countertop, the brushes and combs forever crowded with Patricia’s curly blond hair and the toilet.

Linda could think of anything worse than to have to keep on living with loud, obnoxious, unhygienic, fiber-depleted, and unapologetic Patricia.

Linda would rather die chasing down a bra than live one more day with Patricia as a roommate.

“Let’s get my bra.”