Sleep on it for now.

Anna stood there holding the red envelope and pondered what to do.

Money, she thought. Good. But the rest of it smacked of some kind of kinky head game. She thought about the voice on the phone -- "Have fun, I know I did" -- and wondered. Who was that? Do I know them? She looked again at the lacy pink lingerie and smiled. Cute, at least. She frowned at the phone and wondered if there was some way of tracing where it came from. Maybe she could ask a friend to be her buddy, somehow, in case there was any actual danger. Did this phone at least have G.P.S.?

There was a faint chime from her computer. "It's two-thirty a.m.," the talking clock said. She had chosen the Clarabelle voice, which reminded her of a breathless English schoolgirl. Usually her talking clock used Misako, but for late-night study sessions, Clarabelle's cheerful tones were a better match.

A wave of sleepiness swept over her. Her eyes could barely focus.

"Better sleep on it," Anna said aloud.

Anna rearranged her top desk drawer and put the contents of the box inside it, locking it away until tomorrow -- the money, the phone, the note, and the lacy pink things. She tidied up her editing assignment on the computer and shut it down.

Ten minutes later she was asleep with the small red envelope under her pillow.

Anna woke suddenly with the bedside phone already in her hand.

"Hello?" Anna said.

"Hi Anna, it's Kimmie," the caller said.

Anna smiled to hear her voice, sounding happy and excited. Kimmie Nakamura, or Tsukimi Cynthia Nakamura in full, was Anna's best friend in college. A half-Japanese girl with a tall, slim figure and long, dark auburn hair down her back, Kimmie always turned heads when she entered a room.

"Hi Kimmie," Anna said. "What's up?"

"I saw a little white box outside your door last night when I was coming back from The Underground," Kimmie said.

"Hm?" Anna said. That was one of Kimmie's favorite dance clubs. "Oh, right, yeah."

"I got one too," Kimmie said. "Did you open it?"

"Yeah," Anna said.

"It looks fun!" Kimmie said. "I'm gonna do it. Are you?"

"I don't know," Anna said. "I told myself I'd sleep on it."

"Oh, you have to totally do it," Kimmie said. "Otherwise I can't talk to you about it."

"Uh," Anna said. She didn't like the idea of Kimmie running around and doing wild stuff she couldn't even tell Anna about. "That would be bad."

"You need to at least try out the phone," Kimmie said, laughing. "What a kick!"

"Want to do breakfast?" Anna asked.

"Um, I actually have to do my first, um, actually my second task," Kimmie said.

"Kimmie!" Anna said. "You just got it last night!"

Kimmie giggled. "Uh-huh," she said. "Gotta go. You'll love it!" She hung up.

Anna rubbed a hand over her face. From the angle of the light, it was still early morning. It would still be a couple hours before her roommate might be back, if she was coming back to the dorm at all today. More likely it would be brunch and who-knows-what with her girlfriends. Last time they'd gone to some kind of wacky Junkyard Wars fair and somehow she'd won a robot built out of trash. It was still there on Tricia's night table. Anna clapped her hands three times sharply. The robot bowed, did a back somersault, and took a step forward to leave it where it started. Anna laughed.

"Okay, I've slept on it," Anna said aloud. She fished the little red envelope from under her pillow. She wondered if it was already too late to back out gracefully. There might be people in the corridor who would see the envelope if she left it there.

She got up and unlocked her desk drawer. Money, check. Lacy pink things, check. Note, fancy camera phone, check.

She remembered what Kimmie said about the phone. A smile quirked up the corner of her mouth. As she watched, the display screen on the closed phone brightened momentarily, then went dark. She looked at the closed phone, with the camera lens in the corner, and raised an eyebrow.

Anna was a little disappointed that Kimmie had been invited too and had jumped into the game. Who could she talk things over with? But maybe Kimmie could be her buddy in case things got sticky somehow.

Anna took a deep breath.