Symptomatic

the long version

"A young college graduate arrives in New York City for a prestigious internship at a respected magazine. By a fateful coincidence, an older coworker knows of an apartment in Brooklyn that has suddenly been vacated by the mysterious Vera Cross. The friendship that evolves from the narrator's feeling of indebtedness to Vera and from the bond created by their hard-to-place identical skin color at first delights them - but gradually and inexorably affects both women's lives in ways they could not have dreamed."--BOOK JACKET.