Helen Jordan (Lara Flynn Boyle), the middle sister, is a successful author who is adored and envied by everyone she knows, and can have any man she wants. Her charmed life leaves her ultimately unfulfilled, however. She despairs that no one wants her for herself, and that the praise regularly heaped upon her is undeserved. She is fascinated by an unknown man who makes obscene phone calls to her apartment and tries to seek out a relationship with him. She is disappointed, though, when she finds out the man is her neighbor Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman), to whom she is not attracted. Allen, who is coincidentally one of Bill's patients, sinks into depression as Helen's rejection ruins his fantasies, and he realizes that a woman who truly cares for him, Kristina (Camryn Manheim), has been right under his nose all along, but she had recently killed the apartment doorman after he raped her. While Allen is still content with her friendship after she confided this in him, Helen reveals that the genitals of the doorman were discovered by police less than six months later in Kristina's freezer.