My boyfriend’s life was more or less exactly like people like me generally imagined rich people’s lives to be. His mother lay around by the swimming pool looking impossibly thin and young. His father name-dropped celebrities, and the residents of their gated neighborhood threw lavish parties at which people came out of the bathroom wiping their noses and looking furtive.

But something happened at one of these parties that made my rich boyfriend, Anthony, and me split up.

There was this girl, only a few years younger than me, who was, not to put to fine a point on it, part of the entertainment at a party in the boyfriend’s parents’ neighborhood. I only met her because I was looking for a toilet. I stumbled into the bedroom where she had set up shop. This beautiful young woman, who looked to be no more than twenty years old, was propped up against the headboard, looking dazed, naked as a jaybird. A substantial amount of someone else’s body glitter seemed to have rubbed off on her.

She squinted at me and said, "Uh, lady, are you all right? You look all lost and confused."

She had impossibly long and dark eyelashes that kept trying to flutter down over her eyes. She probably had an impossibly perfect body, too, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was mostly thinking about what a big yokel I felt like. I was from rural Kentucky, where decadence meant drinking bourbon and watching HBO in your friend’s parents’ house until you passed out. I was not equipped to deal with this situation.

"I was looking for the bathroom," I explained stupidly.

"There’s one right through that door," she said, pointing.

I felt I had been rude, gawking at her like: a) I had never seen a prostitute before, which I certainly had; and b) she was some kind of freak. So when I came out of the bathroom, I asked her, "Uh, are you okay in here? Can I get you anything?"

She grinned at me. It was a nice grin. She had a nice dimple. "That’s real nice of you. You know what it’s like when you’re on the job – most of these people don’t even remember that you’re human."

"I’m a librarian," I blurted.

She threw her head back and laughed. "I like you, Marian the Librarian," she said. "And since you asked, I’d love a cup of coffee."

I was fond of coffee, myself, and used to Marian-the-Librarian jokes, so I rustled us both up some coffee and sat on the bed with her while we drank it. She told me her name was Sally and she was nineteen years old, and she had two pet cats and a big sister in medical school. I told her how everyone at my high school had expected me to be some kind of Proust scholar when I grew up, some kind of professor or acclaimed academic, and instead I was just an underpaid public servant with my hair in a bun. She said, "At least you’re not a hooker," which, although she was laughing when she said it, made me feel bad for complaining.

My boyfriend did not miss me during all of this, because, ironically, he was chatting up a professor – a sexy redheaded professor named Nancy Ramone who had just published a book about Frank Lloyd Wright.

But that wasn’t why we broke up.

We broke up because I found out a few days later that someone at that party had gotten too rough with Sally, and she had ended up in the hospital.

"Is she okay?" I asked.

The boyfriend shrugged.  "I dunno."

"What," I said, "didn’t anybody go by the hospital to check on her or anything?"

My boyfriend laughed, and patted me on the shoulder. "She was hired help. If your eyebrow lady was in the hospital, you wouldn’t go by to see how she was doing, would you?"

"I might," I said defensively. "At least I’d stop by the beauty parlor and ask one of the other eyebrow ladies how she was doing."

"She was hired help," the boyfriend repeated.

I backed away from him. It probably seemed like a melodramatic gesture, but I really did feel revolted. "That’s sick, Anthony, sicker and more perverted than any sexual act could have aspired to be. That girl has a name. She has a sister."

Anthony said, "Look, Alice, if it means that much to you, I’ll call around to the different hospitals and find out what happened."

"Forget it," I said, walking away from him. "Get Dr. Nancy to make the call for you."

Unfortunately, this noble gesture on my part meant that I was back to eating Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese with my house mates instead of lounging around Restaurant BT in little filmy tops.

I found the sudden transition far more crushing than I cared to admit.

"Come on, Alice," my house mate, Martha, cajoled one afternoon as I sat on the kitchen floor eating Girl Scout cookies and staring into space. "You’ll meet someone else."

"Not someone else with that much money," I said dully. "If I’d waited around for Anthony to ask me to marry him, I would never have had to work again."

"Alice, what are you even saying? This isn’t like you. You never used to care about money."

"That was before I found out what it was like to have lots of it," I explained miserably. "Or at least be close to lots of it. Now I’ll have to work at the library for the rest of my life." I turned to her, coming back to life a little bit as I remembered something. "Martha," I said, "this lady retired from the library last fall, right? We had a big going-away party for her and everything. Well, did I tell you what they gave that lady for her retirement present?" I asked, my voice starting to tremble.

"A gold watch?" Martha asked, sounding as if she were hoping against hope.

"They gave her an engraving of the library," I said. "That was what they gave her. That was what she wanted. After twenty-five years, the best present she could possibly get was an engraving of the building where she’d already had to come every day for twenty-five years. That’s what happens to you when you work in a library for too long."

Martha didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so she just put her arm around me.

Our other house mate, Sebastian, had less compassion for me. "I told you that rich boy was no good from the get-go, Aaaaaaa-lice," he drawled accusingly, pointing his cereal spoon at me as I hung my head over my morning coffee in the dining room. "You can’t trust those people. They’re not like us."

"Oh, shut up, Sebastian," Martha said impatiently. "Your parents have more money than the Pope. You’re just mad because they don’t approve of – wait, what is it they don’t approve of about you?"

"Anything," Sebastian sniffed.

A lot of people thought, mistakenly, that Sebastian was gay – because he was effeminate, for one thing, and because he’d turned his back on the academic world halfway through getting his Ph.D., and elected to take a two-year degree at a vocational school and become a hairdresser instead. He was in his parents’ bad books because they didn’t approve of frivolous professions like hairdressing. They were professors. They wanted their son to be a professor. I’d seen their son trying to be a professor, and it had nearly killed him. He would have been a lousy professor – all angry and superior and flying off the handle for no reason. He was a great hairdresser.

So Sebastian was sitting at the table with his nose in the air, and I was staring into the depths of my coffee cup, thinking about how much I hated being a librarian and wondering why it had ever seemed like a good idea to me in the first place, and Martha was patting my hand and saying, "Come on, Alice, there must be something you enjoy about being alive besides sitting around wearing expensive clothes." It was embarrassing, farcical. I had once been happy and wholesome on a reasonably small amount of money, and now I was sitting around mourning the loss of future hundred-dollar Sisley dresses like my dog had just died.

Martha told me, "You should come to this fundraiser that HOPE is throwing tonight." Martha worked for a lawyer who represented a nonprofit called HOPE, which was an acronym for I-could-never-remember-what. She said, "There’s only a five-dollar cover charge and there’s a bunch of local bands and DJ’s who donated their services and all the money goes to a really great cause," and finally I told her I’d go, because I needed to quit talking to her and get out the door, or I was going to miss my bus.

I spent the day moping at the reference desk, arranging my face into a creepy, wooden smile that I could feel didn’t quite reach my eyes when patrons approached and wanted to know where the books on STD’s were, and did the library have a subscription to Playboy, and did we have a book that was about so tall and it was red? It was hot and sticky at the bus stop even after the sun had started to go down, and I actually cried a little on the bus while pretending to read a book, and the last thing I really wanted to do at the end of such a day was go to a happy-happy feel-good fundraiser and try to be my old cheerful self.

Martha wouldn’t let it go, though, and as soon as I stepped through the door, she started fussing over me and trying to decide what I should wear.

I said, "Why don’t I just wear what I’ve got on?"

Martha gave me a look that said she knew I was being deliberately obtuse, and she wasn’t going to let me get away with it.

I was wearing a suit and heels, which was hardly appropriate for happy-feel-good times. It wasn’t even really appropriate for work, but if I didn’t try to look as severe, and as much like Boss Lady, as possible, my community-service student workers laughed at me and terrified me, sitting at the reference area tables texting each other, and writing "homo" in the encyclopedia next to Oscar Wilde’s picture, and so on and so forth.

Martha coaxed me into some of my old thrift-store finds from back in the day, and Sebastian wafted in and said I should wear my hair in pigtails because it made me look like a sexy farm girl, whatever that meant. Then Martha stuffed me into her Jeep and we drove to one of those abandoned warehouses that sits forgotten in cities for ages, and then, just before the rats would have arrived, gets turned into a gathering place for hipsters.

I didn’t like hipsters. They always seemed to be trying to put one over on me, and honestly, if a bunch of rowdy fifteen-year-olds could put one over on me at work, hipper-than-thou twentysomethings could easily put one over on me in my leisure hours. The arts and crafts movement was very big just then, and I couldn’t knit or decoupage or do anything but talk about the Library of Congress Call Number System, and why we should really be using it in public libraries instead of the Dewey Decimal.

I did approve wholeheartedly of the DJ, though, who was playing Dolly and Porter’s "Just Someone I Used To Know" when we got there. Martha introduced me to several of her co-workers, then contrived to leave me standing in the middle of a group of young and single men.

"What do you think about Interpol?" one of them asked me. "I think they’re a bunch of poseurs."

"Interpol?" I repeated, confused. "You mean the people who come and take you away if you burn copies of your DVD rentals?"

The young men all looked at each other, and I realized I’d dropped the ball. Interpol was probably the name of some German industrial band, like Can. I couldn’t even blame my not knowing these things on being old; I was only twenty-five.

"I think I’m just going to go over here now," I said, and I followed the exit signs to a door in a stairwell.

On the other side of the stairs were some concrete steps leading out and down into an alley, badly lit by a dim electrical bulb. I slumped down on them and gave a sigh. I would have liked a cup of coffee, but I wasn’t completely sure where I was in relation to the closest coffeehouse. It was still very warm out, and I was only twenty-five and I felt like I should have been having so much fun, but I wasn’t.

"Hey, Alice," a vaguely familiar voice said behind me, and I turned to see who it was. To my delight, Sally, the girl from the wealthy folks’ party, was leaning against the door, her terrific silly grin (dimple and all) looking particularly appealing in the yellow glow of the cheap electric bulb.

"Sally!" I said, and I got up to hug her, but she put her hands up.

"Better not," she explained gently. "I’ve been through a trauma, and all. You don’t want to crush me."

"Right," I said, shoving my hands awkwardly into my pockets. "But how are you? I heard you got hurt real bad at that party, and I don’t know your last name, so I couldn’t find out anything about it. I – "

She interrupted me, still smiling beatifically. "It’s all right, Alice. Really."

"But you’re okay now?" I said.

"Yeah. I’m great," she beamed.

"You might really want to go into a less dangerous line of work, though, Sally," I laughed, perhaps a trifle hysterically. I was gulping back tears of relief that she wasn’t dead. "I highly recommend library school. Actually, wait, no, I don’t," I added truthfully. "But my house mate Sebastian went to beauty school and he seems very – "

Once again, Sally kindly cut me off in mid-ramble rather than just letting me stand there and flail around indefinitely. "I’m not turning tricks anymore."

"Well – good. What are you doing?"

"Listen," she said, "I can’t stay. I just wanted to let you know, I don’t hold you responsible for what happened that night, okay? You were real sweet to me. I’ll never forget that."

For a minute, I felt indignant – why should she hold me responsible? – but then I realized she was right. I’d been at that party. I hadn’t made any objection to what was going on. I hadn’t seen any reason to, at the time. I’d thought of myself, on some secret, smug, level, as just a little bit better than the other guests because I had a job that I hated. Because I had blue-collar parents. Because I had stopped to have a cup of coffee with the hired girl. But I hadn’t bothered to find out what I might be able to do to help her. I was too goody-goody working-class liberal to pass judgment on anyone’s decision to be a sex worker, so I’d left her to her fate.

"Hey. Don’t cry," said Sally.

"Sorry." I hadn’t realized I was crying. I wiped my face and added, "I just feel like I should have done – "

"You can do something to help me now," she said, seeming to read my mind. "I’m gonna be away for a while."

"Is this to do with your new job?" I asked eagerly.

She threw her head back and laughed.  "Yeah, kind of. But I need someone to look after the cats." She dug around in the pocket of her jacket and produced a key on a little ball chain, with an address printed on a grubby little cardboard rectangle. "Can you go by first thing tomorrow and check on ‘em?"

I said I would, and she thanked me. She leaned very close, like she might kiss me, but she didn’t kiss me. I kind of would have liked it if she had. I wasn’t gay, or anything like that, but I wasn’t made out of stone, either. She just said, "I’ve got to go. You’re real sweet." Then she swayed down the steps and sort of disappeared once she got out of reach of the light bulb’s glow.

The next day was my day off from work, but I got up early and rode HART to the address written on Sally’s little cardboard keychain. It was an apartment complex – not a fancy one, not an especially derelict one, just one like the countless ones my friends and I had lived in on student loan money in college. I found my way to apartment 35 and let myself in, a little nervously.

There was a girl sitting in the living room, red-eyed and distressed, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her hoodie. She looked up at me and said, "You must be Sally’s girlfriend."

She stood up and held her hand out to me, but I shook my head. "No, I’m just a friend. She asked me to take care of her cats."

"Oh. Okay." She swallowed hard and said, "They’re around here somewhere. I’m Dorothy. Sally’s sister. How did you know her?"

Something about her use of the past tense made me break out in a cold sweat. Sally was alive and well. I’d seen her the night before.

"We met at a party," I hedged.

Dorothy nodded. "Sally loved a party. Poor little thing."

Under my cold sweat, I went all hot and prickly. I opened my mouth to ask her what was going on here, but then she said, "I never even got to see her. The doctor said she didn’t live through the night."

My heart started to pound. Unless this woman was insane, or lying, Sally had been dead for at least four days when I’d seen her last night. And not only had she spoken to me, and almost kissed me, she’d given me the keys I was holding in my hand.

I didn’t usually think a lot about death, to be honest, so it wasn’t as though I’d formed an opinion as adamant as, "I don’t believe in ghosts." I’d heard a lot of convincing stories of hauntings in and around my hometown. Still, I felt as though the rational world had suddenly dissolved around me, and I sat down hard, with a thump, on Sally’s love seat.

I talked to her sister for a little while longer and we both cried a lot, though probably for different reasons, and eventually Dorothy stuffed Sally’s two gray cats into a carrier. It dawned on me for the first time that she expected me to take them home with me, that Sally had expected me to take them home with me, that I couldn’t take them on the bus, and I called Sebastian at work and hyperventilated into the phone for a good five minutes before I could calm down enough to ask him could he come get me on his lunch break?

"Don’t start," I said to him when I climbed into the car. "I know we should have had a sit-down meeting with Martha about taking in cats, but it’s too bad. This is an emergency."

"Hey, calm down," Sebastian replied, more solicitously than I had ever heard him speak to anyone. "What’s going on, Alice? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost."

I stole a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror. I had actually turned green.

"Someone left me their cats," I explained weakly. "Posthumously. It was all kind of a last minute thing."

Sebastian looked at me sideways and asked carelessly, "You okay?"

"Not really," I admitted.

He reached over and gave my hand a hasty squeeze, then didn’t look at me or speak to me again all the way home.

When we pulled into the garage, he said, "You know what Martha’s like, the big bleeding-heart. She’ll just be sorry they’re cats and not crack whores."

I winced, but he didn’t have any way of knowing what he’d just said. "And what about you?"

He shrugged. "Everybody already thinks I’m a homosexual," he sighed. "Why not start keeping cats?"

"Stereotypes hurt everyone, Sebastian," I said automatically, being a big bleeding-heart myself. Then, impulsively, I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you," I said.

"Whatever," he said brusquely. "Take them inside before I change my mind. Oh, and Alice?" he added as I hauled the cat carrier out of the car.

"Yeah?"