Letting the door swing closed behind her, Deb took a moment to stand on her stoop, hands burrowed in the pockets of her worn, black leather coat, her head tilted upwards, her eyes squinting in greeting to the bright morning sun and a small downturn curling into the corners of her lips. She fished the near-empty carton of Malboro and her lighter out of her left pocket, instantly regretted it when the stinging cold morning bit at the chapped knuckles of her hand, and reminded herself for at least the tenth time that week that she should really buy some gloves. 'Or take up fucking knitting and save my life this fucking Winter, christ...' Deb thought to herself, lighting up a cigarette and returning the pack and lighter to her pocket, 'knit myself a fucking roommate maybe.' 

Rolling the cigarette to the right corner of her mouth she shot out a short pillar of smoke from her left, and finally deigned to set off from her stoop, and onto the daily pilgrimage to work. Crossing the street, Deb strolled past the iron gates and into Tompkins Square Park, setting off into the North-East, grateful for the familiarity of the shortcut so she could allow her mind to drift into her thoughts, mainly her most current source of irritation.

[centre][i]E/village room available, split rent, cheap!![/i][/centre]
[centre][i]kitchen/living room, bathroom, microwave oven, view of tompkin square[/i][/centre]
[centre][i]Apart.5 339 E 10th st, no pets or suits[/i][/centre]
[centre][i]Call Video Dungeon on-[/i][/centre]

It'd been three weeks since Joel left to fester in his oh so tedious so-sorry-for-me straight man bullshit, and two weeks since Deb had put the ad in the Village Voice, to less than positive results, too many applicants 'knowing someone who knew Deb' and therefore were quick to turn around and hightail out the door when she started talking ground rules. She'd even consented to searching outside the typical 'village circle' and posting in the classifieds of some local newspaper, but that had only brought a small flood of penniless students, out-of-work actors and not-the-fun-kind druggies to her doorstep. And they really weren't what Deb needed, she needed someone who had a job, or some family inheritance or maybe an extremely benevolent sugar daddy. She needed someone who'd be able to pay the gas bill or else she'd seriously need to consider taking up knitting just to keep out the cold. She thought back to last year, January, what people were now calling 'the cold wave' and frowned.

Deb took another long drag of her cigarette, lips pursing and brow furrowing, as she weaved around two rastas walking a tartan-jacketed Shih Tzu in the opposite direction. Finding a roomate was hard, and she was distantly reminded of how hard it had in the first place been to recruit Joel as a roommate back in '92, luckily for her at that time Joel was still a struggling photographer, convinced that he'd hit stardom if he could just focus his art through the lens of a tiny but durable hovel of a room with a perfect view of the trees and heroin junkies of Tompkin Square. 'Really', Deb mused as she crossed out of Tompkin Square onto St. Marks Place, 'we had a good deal Joel and I', and they had, he was nothing but amiable with her, he payed his bills on time, they'd even had something of a cooking schedule. 

Alas, she shrugged to herself, 'shame I was feeling charitable and willing to teach when his closeted girlfriend came to stay', and really to be fair Joel could've probably been fine with discovering his girlfriend and his roommate making the beast with two backs if the girlfriend in question hadn't thrown a tantrum in the midst of her sexuality crisis, dumped Joel and fled back to New Jersey to find solace with her Catholic family and the confessionals at the Holy Rosary Parish. So, it ended, Joel had left, not wanting to 'house with the succubus' any longer, and had taken his half of the rent with him. Which wasn't good, because small as it was, Deb liked her apartment, it was close to work and Nino's pizza, and several of the heroin junkies really did make for good company.

Deb, further bundled into her coat, eventually turned onto 1st Avenue and found herself outside Video Dungeon, dark and dormant this early in the morning. Fishing a set of keys out of her pocket she set about pushing up the shutters and opening the door. She turned to look behind her and spied the bum that liked to make the rounds around the stores this time of the day, and lifted a hand to her lips to pluck her still-lit cigarette from them, offering it to him. He took it, giving a silent nod to her, Deb replying in kind, before she ducked into the Video Dungeon, closing the door behind her. Inside, she knelt down to beside the door frame on her left, feeling along the floor to find the light switch for the neon sign in the window. Successfully switching it on, Deb made a beeline for the stores sound system behind the counter, shrugging off her coat as she went. She flicked through the small selection Felix let her keep at the store, pulling out one specific tape and allowing a small sigh to pass from her lips.

She could always rely on Kathleen Hanna's shouting and anger to calm her own down inside her head.