Taking stock of the situation, you find yourself living with an unstable pathological liar prone to fraud and outright theft. You suspect a history of mental illness, criminal tendencies, and immoral behavior. Your landlord now associates you with his worst tenant, and he�s currently plotting to remove you both from the building. You�ve just been implicated in fraud by unwittingly circumventing nearly a thousand dollars of debt in your roommate�s utility account. You�ve tendered a thousand dollar security deposit to a person who has no sense of ethics in relation to business or behavior, and you�ve invested over four hundred dollars building a loft that your landlord wants to evict you from.

So what do you do when the future looks this bleak?

Go shopping of course.

Sure you�ve wasted a ton of money and the future of your living situation is tentative at best, but you still need bowls and pots. You might get kicked out next week, but you�re going to need to cook until that point when you�re exit is certain rather then threatened.

I didn�t mention any of the things I found out over at Keyspan. While it was certainly possible that she assumed I would find things out all along, her psychological profile didn�t allow for the uncertainty of my reaction.

Compulsive liars plan the expected future by meticulously charting all the possible outcomes stemming from a word or action, so it would follow that she would need to account for my reaction. From the short period of time we�d spent together, she could not expect any specific reaction from me with certainty. Without any sense of my moral compass, my reaction could range anywhere from furious rage to appreciative admiration. What was far more likely is that she never expected her financial delinquency to be exposed. She�d analyzed the situation and expected that they would simply close out the previous account and subsequent overdue balance without mentioning anything to me. A new account would be opened in my name while the old one would simply be deleted.

Her expectations didn�t account for a blabbering deskjocky to spill the beans, but there they were...pork fat and all.

I made no mention of the fiasco, instead filing it away for some potential future use. If she was going to play this entire relationship from a point of deceit and manipulation, I should begin to stack my hand at some point. Showing part of my hand this early would be unwise, so I pretended that the whole Keyspan thing never happened.

The Ruemate continued her forced bubbliness with a nearly imperceptible sense of relief.

And so, the game was afoot.

We were both in need of various household items. Presumably drunk on laze, she had yet to outfit the apartment she�d been living in for over a year. I�d decided to move up with the bare minimum of accessories in an unsuccessful attempt to streamline my life. Between our collective possessions, our apartment was painfully lacking in kitchen items, missing many assorted accoutrements, and in desperate need of all sorts of shelving.

What better place for two honeymooning roommates to find simple solutions to life�s problems then Ikea?

A slow jaunt across the Long Island Expressway brought us to the feet of commerce where a hulking Swedish mass of furniture and accessories stood before us.

All hail Ikea.

Like many of the detestable college pairs, we wandered together through miles and miles of bedroom and kitchen models, through aisles and aisles of lighting and culinary until our cart was laden like a gypsy caravan.

Stubbornly thrifty in my acquisitions, I picked out a few bowls, a couple of pots, one pan, a few assorted kitchen utensils, and a set of speaker stands for the living room.

She, ever the portly swine, selected a number of shelving units, two fur throws, a couple of lamps, various candle-related items, flower bulbs and accompanying vases, and a $60 down comforter among a few other assorted items.

Considering the eroding faith between us, things were surprisingly pleasant...until we reached the checkout line.

This was the point that she decided to tell me that she didn�t have any money and I�d have to be putting everything on my credit card.

�I just figured we�d sort-of, just put it on one card and then sort it out when we got back. You know? I can�t put it on mine though, I�m max�d out, so can you just put in on yours?�

Of course, at this point in the timeline I was aware that she�d lost both her jobs. Her finances were in question and her income was stagnant. As this whole excursion was her idea, and she�d obviously planned to try and stick me with the bill.

While it is not outrageous to have one person pay then split things up later, courtesy demands that the plan be agreed upon beforehand. When you�ve just shelled out a thousand dollars for a security deposit, $650 for your first months rent, $50 for your parking space, and over four hundred bucks for building supplies...your minimum wage salary begins to stretch thin. But when you�re standing in a checkout line with a cart full of shopping bounty, alternatives aren�t plentiful.

Seeing no other option, I agreed to put things on my card.

There were upcoming bills I would owe, more improvements for the apartment that I�d be expected to invest in, and the next months� rent still left to pay. If I wasn�t reimbursed in a timely manor, I could easily deduct my payment from any of the future transactions.

While this relationship was surely changing from symbiotic to parasitic, her current unemployment demanded my continued financial participation. Without my contribution to the rent and utilities, she would not be able to continue living in the apartment. For the time being, she needed to keep things between us as cordial and financially solvent as possible.

There are very few times when a bank�s limitations work out in your favor, but as the clerk was ringing up our purchases, I reminded the Ruemate that my card had a three hundred dollar spending limit.

Until recently, I�ve never been able to get a credit card. My non-traditional higher education didn�t spurn a flood of collegiate credit card offers, and my impoverished salaries have never warranted immediate approval. At this point in my life, all my previous credit applications had been denied, not for bad credit, but for an absence of credit history.

All I had at my disposal was my handy-dandy check card.

While I knew that the card had a hard limit on the amount of credit available, I wasn�t sure exactly what it was. I remembered that the ATMs had a withdrawal limit of three hundred dollars, so I assumed this to be the case with the available credit. Honestly, I wasn�t sure if it was true or not, but I really couldn�t afford to set aside much more.

As the tally was rapidly approaching the three-hundred dollar mark, I reminded the Ruemate that our total would have to fall significantly below three hundred in order to account for the addition of taxes. As I failed to volunteer any sacrifices from the items I�d selected, she reluctantly began to pull some of her impulse purchases off the belt.

The total ended up falling just under the three hundred dollar limit with the majority of the expense stemming from her purchases. It was regretful that I had to cover the cost, but I would be able to cook a decent meal for the first time since moving in.

Without fail, it seems that the more I resist investing myself in something, the more I am committed to it.

Since the first encounter with the landlord, I�d become increasingly aware of the Ruemate�s vacant morals and evil intent. I�d come from affording her the benefit of doubt, to a realization that she was completely bankrupt and worthless as a person. She was a parasite, a blight to all who have ever encountered her, spreading misery and cancer to everyone who has ever entrusted her with friendship or casual association. As time would continue, further investigation would prove that she was even worse then I suspected, that she was hated even more then I imagined, and that I was completely unprepared for the extent of her capabilities.

While my every intuition urged a hasty exit from the whole situation, my financial constraints prevented any sort of evacuation from the apartment.

They say that money makes money, but I was finding a similar relationship with losses.