When Dave walked into the living room the television reception cleared. His roommate Jonathan had been contorting the rabbit ears, supplementing them with wire coat hangers bent into late-Picasso shapes. The American League playoffs were on but the snow had made it impossible to see the ball.

The third roommate, Jessie, curled against the pillows on the couch missing the snow on the screen.

Jonathan was getting his MBA; Jessie, his girlfriend, was making another attempt at finishing her undergraduate degree. They lived in the top half of a house on a misspelled street -- Cemetary Road -- in Hadley, Massachusetts. Dave sublet the small back bedroom from Jonathan and Jessie. Its walls were lined with plank-and-cinder-block bookshelves crammed with science fiction paperbacks that were arranged alphabetically by author. He did not mind the rhythmic uh, uh, uh of Jessie's voice through the walls at night.

At the end of the street was the town's cemetery. Through rusted open gates, visitors could see family groupings dating from the early 1800s; and in the newer part of the cemetery, amid clumps of grass, stood rows of partially completed headstones.

Dave was enrolled in an evening math class. He was a sort of genius, but, after many attempts, he knew that he could only earn his bachelor's degree by concentrating on one class at a time. Jonathan did not mind asking Dave for help on his homework.

"It's easier if you know calculus," Dave told Jonathan as he helped him with his business school economics course.

"I don't need calculus," Jonathan answered. "I'm going to manage high-end portfolios. I need sales acumen; I need to know how to play tennis and what wine to order for old ladies at lunch." Jonathan had an easy smile and could banter well. He drove to Connecticut three times a week and worked on his golf game at a public course.

While Dave and Jonathan worked on Jonathan's homework, Jessie assembled dinner from ingredients that were there: rice, leftover hamburger, fresh zucchini urged on them by the downstairs neighbor whose rent included use of the yard.

"What is calculus anyway?" she called from the kitchen as she frowned over a wrinkled green pepper.

"It's the study of change in time," Jonathan answered. He highlighted his notes each night and studied them before every class.

Her answer had the enthusiasm of the psychoactively drugged; Jonathan did not respond, but expelled a long breath and stared anew at the problems in front of him, cupping his forehead with his hands.

"It's also a stone that forms over time in the kidneys or gall bladder," Dave added.

Jessie giggled. She put the aged pepper on the end of a fork and roasted it over the electric coil burner.

When supper was ready, they sat at the round table in the kitchen and ate the melange Jessie had assembled. After dinner, Jonathan returned to his homework and Dave washed the dishes; Jessie sat in the kitchen keeping him company and smoking a joint.

He measured liquid soap into the sink with the container's cap, watching the meniscus and thinking about surface tension. No soap spilled over the top. He washed the glasses first, then the large plates, then the small plates they'd used during the day. At the end, he drained the sink then rinsed the silverware that had settled to the bottom; he set the pots to soak.

Dave stood with his back to her and folded the dishtowel in thirds; he hung the towel over the handle of the stove, adjusting it until the front hung longer than the back.

Late at night, Dave sat at the kitchen table composing a letter, in earnest print, carved onto a lined yellow tablet.

Once again I am writing you to request that you replace the road sign on our street. A temporary sign will suffice until such time as the Borough can appropriate funds for a metal replacement bearing the correct spelling of Cemetery Road.

Five years earlier, Dave had enrolled at college with his high school friend, Jonathan. He'd earned one A, one F, and three Incompletes his first semester; he'd also drunk beer every night and studied the geometry of pool with Phi Beta attention. He was put on academic probation and earned a 4.0 the next semester. The semester after that he earned all Incompletes. After several more semesters of roller coaster letters from the Academic Dean's Office, Dave's parents insisted that he pay for a semester of college to show commitment. Instead, he dropped out and applied for a job as a house painter. At the interview he said that he would not climb ladders above the third step and that he was limited to rooms with eight-and-a-half-foot ceilings.

The crew was happy to take Dave on. Most college kids want the tan that goes with house painting. Dave worked hard for a couple of years before he felt secure enough to begin a one-course-per-semester approach to his bachelor's degree.

It was mid-December and snowplows worked at night to keep at bay the first snows of the season. Dave received an A on his one final. Jonathan had one more exam to go. Jessie hadn't attended any classes since Columbus Day.

"Let's have a party," she suggested. She was lying on the couch, smoking her after-dinner joint, staring at the snow on the screen that veiled a sitcom.

"Sure, Jess," Jonathan called from their bedroom where he sat at a desk studying.

Dave stepped into the living room from his bedroom; he held the pages of a novel open with his thumb. The reception cleared on the television.

Dave mocked an exaggerated pose as if he were playing Statues. Jessie giggled into her hands. They sat on the couch watching television.

They donned coats, hats and boots and shouted unreturned goodbyes to Jonathan. They ran downstairs and burst through the door into a winter-dark evening. Jessie headed down the center of the road, whirling and skipping with her arms flung wide.

"Come on," she called to Dave, who walked in the snowdrifts along the side of the road. His steps were large, an exaggerated lifting of knees to clear the snow.

She reached the cemetery first and hid behind a headstone that was mostly buried in snow. When Dave appeared through the gates, she pelted him with snowballs. He stood still while blotches of white appeared on his chest, like the target of an exceptionally good marksman. Jessie stood up from behind her tombstone barricade.

He looked at her cherry cheeks and the lanks of black hair that strayed from her wool watch cap.

She dropped her weapons and Dave brushed snow from an upended headstone. They sat, and Jessie lit a joint, sucked deeply, then offered it to Dave.

They sat in the winter night shivering in the cold, clean air. Constellations not seen in other seasons lit the sky. They shivered but stayed seated on the headstone.

At Jessie's insistence, the three roommates threw a party on the evening Jonathan finished his last exam. The party was a great success. Dave had calculated the amount of beer they needed with stoichiometric precision (1/2 keg = 1,984 ounces x 1 beer/12 ounces x 1 person/5.5 beers = 30 people); Jessie concocted dips and carved vegetables. Jonathan made several trips to the grocery store to buy ice and napkins and chips. The day of the party, Jessie kept calling people and inviting them.

"How many people have you asked?" Dave stacked pint-sized plastic cups in quincunx arrangements.

That night she wore a red velvet robe purchased from a church rummage sale. She sat on the couch, not speaking to many people, scratching occasionally; the pupils of her eyes were wide. Women in the 18th century who took laudanum looked that way; the nickname of the drug was its effect:

The next night Dave heard an argument through the wall that divided the bedrooms.

But Jonathan listed the recent dates and places of her drugged state, and he was firm.

It is with deep frustration that I write you again regarding our road sign. Surely it is a poor reflection of this town -- the epicenter of at least half a dozen schools of higher education -- that it cannot correctly spell the street names.

The following day, Jonathan packed for winter break while Jessie stayed buried under the covers refusing to speak with him. Jonathan slammed around the apartment stuffing dirty laundry into an L. L. Bean duffle.

Dave stood at the doorway of his room watching Jonathan pack. His hands were shoved in his pockets, and he did not answer.

"She's crazy," Jonathan continued, as he jammed more clothes than were necessary into a garment bag. "I can't bring her to my parents' house. Jesus."

Dave is lean and tall, his face is bony; his eyes large and brown; his hair straight and shaggy. His voice was level and Jimmy Stewart-laconic.

Dave and Jessie sat side by side on the porch steps, huddled in warm coats. It was Christmas Eve. She passed him a joint.

"Because it's there, Dave. It's part of living in our times; it would be like never riding in an airplane, or never getting e-mail, or never driving a car."

He took the joint and placed it at the apex of thumb and forefinger; he inhaled deeply and choked.

Jessie laughed; she leaned over and kissed his cheek. Dave closed his eyes. Her breath left his face too soon; he lifted his hand to his cheek.

She sucked on the joint twice more, holding it casually in fingerless gloves, then she put it out, saving the rest.

Jessie leaned toward him and kissed him again, this time letting her lips linger on his cheek.

"I can show you Dave," she whispered in his ear, her voice raspy from the harsh smoke.

She stood and held out her hand. He stood and ducked his head and followed her inside. In the bedroom she shared with Jonathan, they removed their coats and boots and got into bed. They lay side by side, fully clothed. She stroked his face, then rolled on top of him and kissed him deeply.

"How open-minded are you?" she asked him, leaning on her elbows and letting her hair brush the side of his face.

She stood and removed her blue jeans; he stared at her black underwear, and then reached forward to stroke it gently.

She knelt on the bed so he could reach around to her back. He put his arms around her, then began kneading her hips with his large Abe Lincoln hands.

He did, and she fell against him, pulsing into his side, and as he pinched her in a persistent rhythm he heard the "uh, uh, uh" so familiar to him from behind the bedroom wall.

He did, softly first, then feeling a rare kind of power as she gripped the muscles in his upper arms, he cupped his hands and produced a syncopation that made her come, sobbing, into his neck; noises he'd never heard before. He held her, rocking her, soothing her. After a long while she lifted her face and looked at him.

They spent the Christmas vacation in bed. He learned to make love to her, taking pleasure more often from his own sense of accomplishment than from climaxing. With the precision he'd calculated beer procurement, he walked the line between her pain and pleasure.

Lit candles were all over his room -- on the floor, on the bookshelves, melted to saucers, and balanced on piles of books. He held one in his hand and sat next to her on the bed. He raised his arm, and then tilted melted wax onto her belly.

Her hands reached between her legs, stroking; he watched her eyes close, then poured the wax again. Jessie's head pitched back in twisted ecstasy; her brow contorted and her mouth opened soundlessly at first; then she screamed, the sound carrying muffled through the snow.

Just after New Year's Day, toward the end of winter break, they had a fight. He had been sitting on top of her, clasping her wrists over her head with one of his huge clamshell hands. The other hand slowly made its way down her body, the fingers caressing, sometimes pinching or twisting.

"My face," she muttered, her eyes nearly closed, retreating into her world where pain and pleasure mixed.

Dave stopped moving and released her hands. He was fully dressed, save an unbuttoned shirt. His orgasm was usually an afterthought to her pleasure.

He hesitated a moment, not speaking. He covered her eyes briefly with one hand and half lifted his other hand. Then he dropped both hands back to his side.

He shook his head wordlessly; she left his room and spent the night in the other bedroom.

Two days later, Dave returned home from his current painting job. It was a horrible job -- a first-floor powder room; it seemed as if every time he turned around wet blue paint ended up on some part of his body. He carried home flowers and a bag of groceries and walked upstairs into the living room. He constricted himself so blue paint didn't touch the walls.

Jessie was sitting on the couch staring at a barely discernible picture of the evening news. She held a joint in one hand. Her other hand stroked Jonathan's head, which nestled in her lap.

"The man and his magic," Jonathan announced. He jumped up from the couch and pumped Dave's hand.

Dave stood so still that his body reacted to the force of Jonathan's handshake in Newtonian fashion: Dave's arm pumped of its own accord, and the force extended to the rest of his body making it move. He had no energy to counteract Jonathan's handshake. Newton's Third Law, Dave thought. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Dave did not speak; he calculated possibilities and percentages; elegant proofs ran through his head.

Jessie rose from the couch and walked toward the kitchen. With her back toward Jonathan, she winked at Dave and, stepping closer to him than necessary, brushed past him, touching his hand with her hip.

"When did you get back?" Dave asked Jonathan, his voice rooted in monotone and minutiae.

"Earlier this afternoon. I surprised Jessie in the shower; it was like the scene from Psycho."

A kind of death started just below Dave's ribs; a stone that sent slow waves radiating outward.

Jonathan picked up a knapsack from the center of the living room floor and headed to the bedroom that he shared with Jessie.

They sat at the kitchen table, describing three points. Dave thought: I cannot calculate the size of this circle. To calculate the size of a circle you need the radius, or distance between the points and an included angle. In the latter case, you'd need trigonometry.

Late that night he heard Jessie's "uh, uh, uh," through the wall; he got out of bed and sat at the kitchen table. He tore a piece of paper from Jonathan's notebook and wrote:

I continue to be frustrated at the unwillingness of the Town of Hadley to correct the sign at the head of our street. It makes it very difficult to live here.

Clare Keefe Foster is a graduate of Penn and Villanova law school. After 10 years of practicing law, she enrolled in Temple University's graduate program in creative writing, from which she graduated in May. She now works part-time at a Center City litigation firm. Four years ago, Clare was the runner-up in City Paper's fiction contest with her story Parenting in Counterpoint. Clare is the mother of three children, ages 9, 10 and 12. She lives in Swarthmore with her children and fiance.

Judge's Comments: Fiction

Stephen King says that writing a novel is something akin to entering into a marriage, where composing a short story is more like stealing a kiss.

Andrew Vachss says that writing a good short story is like boxing in a tight ring, where what matters most is economy -- no wasted steps, no extraneous punches.

Taken at a basic level, stripped of the metaphors of violence or romance, what these two writers are getting at is the thing I prize most in a short story -- namely, impact.

It's not enough to have great characters, spot-on descriptions, elaborately constructed metaphors, sly or broad humor and a generous vocabulary (although certainly none of these things hurt). Something has to happen, the same way something has to happen in an opera, or a movie, or a novel. And by the end of the story, the reader shouldn't be scratching her head and saying, Gee, I think something happened -- and I suspect that if I were a little smarter I'd know what it was -- but the story ended with two soda cans floating on the ocean, which I'm pretty sure represent the two main characters, or possibly the United States and Iraq, or maybe just man's inhumanity to man and hey, is The Simpsons a rerun tonight?

Too often, short stories lose their way in the final paragraphs. Instead of resolution, you get the ambiguity favored in the trendier magazines (and in the MFA programs that produce so much of what they're printing). When I read the finalists for this year's contest, I was looking for great characters, spot-on descriptions, nice writing and all that, but the thing I was looking for most was resolution. Something happening, in other words. And, of course, the courage it takes for the writer to make that something happen, to deliver the punch instead of pulling it, to go for the kiss instead of the polite peck on the cheek.

Delta (Clare Keefe Foster): A man, a woman, another man, a misspelled street sign, politically incorrect sex, the metaphor of mathematics and a pervasive mood of misunderstanding and sorrow. In addition to all the ideas it's working with, this story does an expert job of characterization and pacing. With each detail, the author slowly unveils the characters, the ways they're connected and estranged from one another. By the final page, all three of them feel real and the ending hits hard.

Miniatures (Karl Staven): The best fiction -- short story, novel or anything in between -- stays with you. It wakes you up at night and is still with you in the morning. This story is a triumph of tone. It's just plain creepy. And it works.

Jennifer Weiner is the author of the novels Good in Bed and In Her Shoes. She lives in Queen Village and is at work on her third book.