January, 1994

It was early on a Monday morning in my apartment when I woke up and rolled on top of Samantha. The bed shook violently as I held her tight, my body pressed against hers, her head thrashing from side to side, as she cried out, over and over, rising in pitch and intensity.

But not for the reason you're thinking.

It was an earthquake. Samantha was panic-stricken and I was doing my best to calm her down, to make her feel safe. "You're all right!" I shouted above the deafening rumble of ruptured fault lines. "You're OK! Everything's fine!" It was meant to be soothing, but my own terror, combined with the dryness in my throat made me sound demonic.

This was the Northridge Earthquake — 6.7 in magnitude with the fastest peak ground velocity ever recorded — and in the next twenty seconds it would kill sixty, injure thousands, cost tens of billions in property damage and, more important from our viewpoint, alert Samantha's parents that she and I were sleeping together.

That would be many hours later, when telephone service was finally restored and Samantha got through to her worried parents to tell them that she was unhurt. "It was so scary! Thank God I was at Aaron's place!"

The temblor had struck at 4:30 a.m. and Carol, my future mother-in-law, realized the implication of her daughter's words a second before her husband did, just long enough for her to suck air through her teeth.

Samantha was twenty-nine at that point and we were engaged, so it seemed odd that this was at all scandalous, but Vic was old-school Italian Catholic and didn't believe in premarital sex. For women, anyway. He was rather circumspect about his own history.

Vic was the kind of guy who would have — had we been the same age — beaten me up in high school. The first time Samantha dragged me to her family's Christmas Eve party — fifty boisterous and very drunk Italian-Americans — Vic asked if I liked calamari and when I said I didn't, he made me eat it anyway, while everybody laughed.

"I'm glad you're OK, Sammy," Vic said. There was now a chill in his voice and it would remain there until our wedding day.

I held Samantha until the room stopped shaking, and then a little more until she stopped shaking. The fierce rumble had subsided, replaced by distant car alarms and barking dogs. It was pitch dark in the room. My flashlight had been on the night stand, but it could be anywhere now and I went looking for it, groping blindly in the dark.

"You guys OK?" Tom called out from the other side of the apartment.

"We're fine," Samantha called back.

I snapped open the shades on my picture window — intact, luckily — and then shielded my eyes as starlight poured into the room. This was completely unexpected. I had never seen more than a handful of cheerless stars in the fallow Los Angeles sky, but now with the power out and the city lights extinguished it was dazzling, the whole galaxy sprayed across the night sky. It was an awesome and unsettling feeling, standing there naked, the universe blazing above my head, a fragile, untrustworthy planet below my feet.

Then came the aftershocks, both literally — the unnerving tremors that made us freeze in place as our few remaining unbroken dishes rattled in the cupboard — and figuratively — blindsiding Tom with the surprise announcement that I would be moving in with Samantha, a year earlier than we had planned.

Originally, she wanted to wait until we were married for us to live together, but after the trauma of Northridge, she could not bear to sleep by herself anymore. So we found an apartment in fashionable Studio City — it's basically North Hollywood, but with fewer Armenian gangs — and gave notice to our respective landlords.

To commemorate the end of the Roommate Era, Tom and I threw what we called our House-Cooling Party. Get it? It's like a House-Warming but in reverse! (You might not think that was funny, but we did and as I believe I've mentioned, we were professional comedy writers.) In our six years as roommates, we had shared five apartments, all within a one-mile radius. When people asked why we moved so frequently, we explained that we were trying to stay one step ahead of the roaches.

It wasn't a joke.

We were both tremendous slobs. The carpets were stained from spilled drinks and canned soup, the walls were blotched from shaken-up soda cans and smoke-stained from an ill-advised decision to fire up our hibachi in the living room. Crumbs were everywhere. Oreos, Mallowmars, Pop Tarts, Lucky Charms. So, yes, we had roaches. And our roaches had diabetes.

How bad was it? Well, let me put it this way: Do you know how long spaghetti will remain stuck to the ceiling? We do! (Forever.) Do you know what happens to bananas when they're left on the counter for a month? We do! (They foam.) These were just a couple of the many scientific facts discovered in our petri dish kitchens.

Meanwhile, our bathrooms were... well, let's not talk about our bathrooms.

We hired a cleaning crew to come in the morning before the party. It took five people six hours, but the place looked pretty decent by the time that guests arrived. Between that and keeping the lights low, we definitely gave people the misimpression that civilized humans had lived here.

It was an interesting evening, this nexus between the life we had led and the life we had just begun leading, the story so far of our time in Los Angeles written in the discrete clumps of people standing around in our apartment. Tom's work-friends, my temping friends, some Tae Kwon Do people, Mr. and Mrs. World's Strongest Jew, and now the show biz people who counted us as two of their own.

And I finally got to meet Tom's new girlfriend. Whitney the Destroyer. Although at that point she was just known as Whitney.

Tom first told me about his infatuation with The Destroyer years before, not too long after he started working in I.T. downtown. She was a transplant from some English town I'd never heard of. Puddingchester or Wobblybottom or whatever. The Destroyer was working as an Assistant Office Manager and according to Tom was absolutely hopeless on a computer. Which gave him plenty of time to get to know her. And also for her to get used to relying on him.

But — and you probably saw this coming (I sure did) — she was involved with someone else. An on-again/off-again fiancé who was the reason she came to the U.S. to begin with. Tom was once again playing the understanding guy-friend long game. The scenario was depressingly similar to his futile high school/college courtship of Jocelyn and, like with Jocelyn, it killed any possibility of any of Tom's other nascent romances from growing. A baby shark devouring its embryonic siblings in the womb.

But this time, astonishingly, Tom's strategy worked (its success rate soaring to 0.000000001%). It took an agonizingly long time for The Destroyer's slow-motion relationship death spiral to run its course, but when it did, Tom was — as planned — right there to help her through it with a sympathetic ear. And unlike Jocelyn, The Destroyer was grateful for his emotional support. Blow job grateful. The only kind of grateful that matters.

They had already been together for a few months before I got to meet her. Tom had attributed this to Whitney's complicated schedule, but in reality Tom had been keeping her away from me. The reason, I would eventually discover, was that Tom felt that I had judged Jocelyn unfairly, that I had not really given her a chance, and he was worried that I would do the same thing with Whitney. Which was a little insulting, given that it would be hours before I would start referring to her as The Destroyer.

When she walked into the party I did a double take, because at first glance, she looked exactly like Jocelyn. At second glance, she looked very similar to Jocelyn. Like her older, prettier sister. Her hair was more golden, her skin paler, her nose not at all ferret-like. Still, the physical similarities were eerie. Tom certainly had a type.

He introduced Samantha and me to his girlfriend and then went off to get Whitney a drink — she was a fan of light beer — while we made unimaginative small talk.

"So you're the famous Whitney I've heard so much about."

"So you're the famous Aaron I've heard so much about."

"I'm the obscure Samantha you've heard nothing about." Samantha had a lot of improv training. She always went with the bit.

I asked The Destroyer what kind of music she liked and while I hunted for the requested Smashing Pumpkins CD, she and Samantha talked about our wedding. It was early, but a few decisions had been made: Sit-down dinner, live band and the wedding dress would not have a bow on the butt. Samantha had a thing against bow-butts. She was very serious about it.

I admit that The Destroyer seemed perfectly pleasant. Not especially warm — my initial attempt at a welcoming hug dissolved into a polite handshake — but she was clearly intelligent and well-read, with a decent understanding of comedy. She wasn't funny herself, but she generally laughed at the right stuff, which was the next best thing. Plus, who doesn't enjoy a British accent? Besides the Irish, I mean.

When Tom returned with a Miller Light, she gave him a kiss and then told us about what a life-saver he had been. Not just with her computer, but he had helped her get through a very difficult time. She talked about how understanding and sensitive he was. "He's very different from other men," she said. It was a sentence which would have a very different meaning in ten years' time.

Her even, measured tones conveyed a lot less effusiveness than her words. At the time I charitably attributed it to English reserve; later, less charitably, to insincerity.

Tom and Whitney went off so he could introduce her to other guests and I looked to Samantha to get her appraisal. She shrugged one shoulder in response and I nodded in agreement. Whitney seemed fine.

An hour and several Lemon Drops later, Samantha and I were chatting with some of The Has-Beens writers about our exploits at Harvard. For some unknown reason, they assumed Samantha had gone there, too, and she played along, yes... and-ing like a pro.

Of course I remember Canaday Hall! Canaday Hall was awesome! Easily one of my top five favorite halls!

Then the Destroyer gently interrupted our conversation to say that she had to go, but it was so nice meeting us and wouldn't it be fun for all four of us to get together. Then she hugged me, gave us both a smile, and left.

A couple of minutes later, an agitated, red-faced Tom asked us if we had seen Whitney. Samantha and I looked at each other in surprise. Whitney's departure had been so calm and casual that it never even dawned on us that she was walking out on him.

"God damn it," he muttered when we explained what happened.

He walked away, then returned with his car key in hand. "I'll be back," he said.

"Are you sure you're OK to drive?"

"Yeah," he said, and I believed him, because I was drunk and anyone less drunk than me appeared to be sober.

He would not return to until the next morning, full of embarrassed apologies for leaving his own party to chase after Whitney.

"Everything all right?" I asked as I poured half-empty beer bottles down the sink.

"It's fine," he assured me. "She's just going through a rough time." Like with Jocelyn, he was making excuses.

"I thought you just got through helping her through a rough time."

"I did. This is a new one." I looked at him incredulously, while he focused on throwing the used paper plates and plastic utensils into a garbage bag. "But we talked it out. And everything's good. Great, in fact." He said it more for his own benefit than mine.

From then on, I could barely stand to be in the same room with Whitney. I understood what she was, saw the truth behind her cold eyes and fraudulent smile. This was the woman who would drag Tom down. This was The Destroyer.

And by the way, what self-respecting British person drinks light beer?

A few weeks later, Tom and I were living apart. I think we were both surprised by how difficult the separation was. It felt like we barely saw each other any more. Except for workdays, when we spent an hour-and-a-half carpooling, and another ten to twelve hours together in The Room, plus numerous hours on Saturday toiling on a feature film spec. And a few more just hanging out. Plus, we would call each other while we were watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, Quantum Leap, The X-Files, Seinfeld, The Simpsons and Roseanne — probably a few others I forgot — to discuss our favorite jokes and plot twists.

But on Sundays, we lived completely separate lives.

Truly, I don't know how Samantha put up with all this, but she did without complaint, although not without the occasional comment.

"There's something weird about your friendship," she remarked one night, while we were having coffee at an outdoor rooftop coffee shop called The Terrace. It was our favorite hangout, but recently it was struggling to survive the first wave of the Starbucks onslaught. The owners flailed about, trying one gimmick after another to attract customers. Board Game Nights, showcasing local artists, loyalty cards. When they started having live jazz — because there's nothing more pleasant when you're hyped up on caffeine than a ten-minute upright bass solo — we knew its end was near.

"What's wrong with our friendship?" I said loudly, in annoyance and also to be heard over the doon-doon-doon of the upright bass.

"I didn't say wrong," she patiently clarified. "I said weird."

"Weird how?" I pressed.

She chuckled at my overreaction. "I don't know, sweetie. Just weird." I accepted at face value that her observation was good-natured, but I still didn't like it. Ditto a few months later when she started referring to Tom as my "work wife."

But slowly, inexorably, the intensity of our working relationship would make us crave time away from each other. Without ever discussing it, we started socializing less and then not at all. And it helped, if for no other reason than we actually had things to talk about on Monday morning.

There was, however, another reason. Following our lead, Tom and The Destroyer were now living together as well. Which meant we couldn't see him without her. And for us, it wasn't worth it.