Deb left my life with a bang of emotion almost two years ago, the ending fittingly violent and dramatic for a 17-year friendship I could best characterize as big. Big laughs, big adventures, big dramas, big transitions. And big hangovers.

On the day we ended, a void formed, just as I'd known it would. My wild friend was gone.

Other friends and I enjoyed wild times, but Deb was truly wild. Untamable, unstoppable, with no time or patience for the words "can't", "shouldn't" or "won't."

These friends are like sugar. Sweet, addictive, instantly satisfying but not always the most fulfilling. Those most healthy, solid friendships come with intense, riveting conversations, solid advice and unwavering patience in spite of emotional turmoil - vital amenities not always found in those delicious, almost sinful relationships.

Some other friends, particularly men, will not like them. Others will warn you against them. You may even agree. Yet you return, time and again.

So it was with Deb. Hers was a life of hard knocks and an I-will-be-happy-damnit attitude. In the end, that was our undoing.

But Deb's story, though it will be told soon, isn't the focus of this writing.

It's my neighbor, my new wild friend. My new bit of sugar.

She lives four doors down the street from me. She is a tall, lean brunette with a husky voice, a salty vocabulary, a boob job, a four-bedroom house, two dogs and a car she cannot drive. Pam lost her license after an alcohol-related traffic accident that should have killed her but left her alive and in debt to the legal and medical systems.

Yet she celebrates life. Like Deb, she sees above the hurdles that would knock, and keep, most of us down for a very long time. She acknowledges them, then shrugs them off in favor of a beer and a serious session of gossip, tied with throaty, genuine laughter.

These past two weeks, we have spent hours together, and the bond has quickly formed. Suddenly, the missing pieces of my friendship circle are clicking back into place. A cast of unique characters again fills my life. A fellow soccer mom - thoughtful and sweet - and my marketing partner - who knows neither fear or man she cannot charm - have come into focus as central figures in my daily existence. My phone, sometimes silent for an entire weekend during our year at the apartment, sounds again with the achingly beautiful voices of friends.

But either Deb made me more alert, or I am simply a sadder and wiser girl. So soon into this promising adventure, I see red flags.

Two weeks ago, shots and beers appeared as if out of nowhere when a group of us danced into the wee hours at a downtown bar. Later, she admitted it had been her and that she hadn't had the money to do it. "Sometimes," she said, "you've just got to do those things."

A week later, we stoppped in for a single beer on a sunny patio. It was my treat, I said, and watched in shock as she ordered shots. It was $40 I did not have to spend, yet seeing her smile and laugh until her eyes sparkled with tears, I decided it was worthwhile.

She told me yesterday she is 11 days from not having a home, with insufficient money to pay even for groceries. In a sluggish economy, her career as a mortgage broker has all but died. She cleans three houses weekly, and expected $100 cash from one of her employers the next day. It was enough, she said, to buy dog food and a little food. And that was all. Her last mortgage payment was made only because a friend put it on his credit card, she said. She had no idea how she would repay him.

She wept, and I ached for her. My mind began churning with suggestions, ways I might help her, something I could do to ensure my new friend swam to the surface and stayed in our quirky neighborhood.

She would not, I reassured her, be homeless. She and her dogs could stay with us, if worse came to worse.

I begged her to leave the house and come with me to a meeting of a group called the Barstool Philosphers - a monthly gathering in which people far smarter than I meet to talk about current events. A small fix for a a former journalist who once heard such conversations daily; I find this gathering almost a lifeline. Even though I doubted she'd find it truly engaging, it would get her out of the house, I reasoned, and give her something else to think about.

With her seeming ability to adapt and enjoy any situation, she did just that.

She tossed out trivia that stumped all of them and laughed at their befuddlement. She charmed them. I saw it in their faces. My admiration and affection for her grew. She stepped out of the car last night with a smile and a quip.

This evening, she called.

"I'm at a bar," she said. "Come play with me!"

But my house, with its bare walls and a few dirty surfaces, had my attention for the evening. When I refused, she insisted.

"I got paid today! I'll buy! I owe you," she said.

My heart sank.

"But honey, you don't have the money to do that."

"No, I'm OK," she said. "I picked up a couple extra cleaning jobs for next week. I've got money!"

I turned her down again, and finally, she relented.

I thought of her yesterday tears. I thought of the friend whose credit card held her mortgage. I thought of the angst I felt for her.

When our troubles get too ridiculously large for us to see daylight, we escape in any way we can. Some of us to exercise, some to work, others to laughter and the company of others. I understood why she was at the bar, instead of home counting pennies.

But life is a series of choices, a maze of intersections in which we constantly choose directions. Hopefully, we pick the right ones more often than not, the ones that lead us on a jagged but upward course. Like pennies, the wrong choices add up.

I care about her now perhaps even more than I did. The caretaker in me, the one that often seduces me down my own overgrown paths, is awake and on alert for this woman who has already brought so much light to my life.

But a tiny roadblock went up inside me when our conversation ended. A bit of me closed off to her.

It's an effort - no doubt - at self protection. For the insight I may not have had just two or three years ago, I am grateful. For the dented faith it took to gain it, and for the bit of air it releases from the hopeful balloon of this new friendship, a small part of me mourns.