“Remember I told you that the job’s with a dating service that my friend’s starting?”
“Yeah.” Darla’s face went slack as she got the implication. She was never a dull girl. “Your friend with the guys is the one starting this?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m perfect for the job because…” She left the sentence unfinished, forcing Josie to give her the closure she needed.
“Darla, I tried to talk about this with you on the phone, two different times, so don’t give me that look.”
“Well…I…but…” Darla stammered. “I would have let you tell me that little detail, Josie…if you had told me that little detail!”
“That makes no sense. You’re being tautological.”
“I’m being what?”
“You’re talking in circles.”
“Wait, out here they have a word for that?”
“Yeah, it’s called ‘Harvard.’”
“Hold on, hold on,” Darla said, waving her hands in the air. “I’m getting paid $40,000 a year to be an office worker in a dating service that caters to, and hooks up, and makes people have—”
“Threesomes.”
“You are f**king kidding me.”
“Well, you were squealing on the phone, Darla. ‘$40,000! $40,000! Holy f**king shit, $40,000!’ over and over again, and when I tried to give you the details it was like you were walking on coals and dancing after a touchdown all at once on the phone. It wasas if I could feel that.”
“Well, forty thousand f**kin’ dollars a year is unbelievable, Josie.”
“Not here.”
“Well in Ohio it sure as hell is. I’m making federal minimum wage. Do you know the difference between $7.25 and $20?”
“Yeah, the difference is Ohio and Eastern Massachusetts.” Josie took a sip of her tea. “But look, that’s details.”
“‘Threesome dating service’ is a pretty big f**kin’ detail. I thought you were saying ‘tree-hugger dating service.’”
“What?” Josie snapped, incredulous. “Why would I open one of those?”
“Like it’s any weirder than the truth?”
Okay. Darla had her there. “Does it change your attitude about moving out here and working in the job?”
Darla stopped cold. “Oh, hell no!” she said, swinging her blonde bush of hair around over one shoulder. “It’s just…man, I’m kinda glad I didn’t know that detail.”
“Why?”
“It would have been awfully hard to lie to Mama.”
They both went silent at that one. Josie didn’t have an answer.
“Anything else I don’t know about?” Darla’s eyebrows were raised so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. Figuring it was best to quit while she was ahead, Josie just shook her head.
“Good.”
“Tree-hugger dating service?” Josie snickered.
“What? Trevor and Joe told me all about Boston and how crazy people are out here. How you walk cats on leashes and have doggy daycare. I mean—daycare centers for dogs, Josie.”
“Lots of people have that.”
“Then they’re crazy. Babies and toddlers—sure. But what’s next? Music classes and massages? French lessons for the puppies?”
“You joke, Darla, but…I think you’re going to find Cambridge is like living on another planet.”
“That’s fine. As long as I can breathe the air, I’ll find a way to fit in. For $40,000 a year I can do anything. Even a threesome dating service, apparently.”
“And you think doggie daycare is weird?”
Darla laughed, a booming sound that filled the high ceilings. Josie had missed it. “Fair enough.”
The first package for Darla arrived about three weeks after she moved in, and Josie just made sure to set it on the table right inside the apartment where she normally stashed the mail and assorted things, like her sunglasses.
Later that day Darla opened it and said, “Oh, huh…interesting.” She pulled out a bright green mug, the same Kelly green you saw all over Boston around St. Patrick’s Day or when the Celtics did well. It had the logo for a well-known fertilizer company on it. Darla fished around in the box and said, “That’s odd.”
“How random,” Josie said.
Darla shrugged. “Free mug.” She went into the kitchen.
Josie heard the water turn on and guessed she was washing it. Sure enough she was right, as she walked past she saw it sitting in the dish rack, already drying. It would stick out like a green thumb in the cabinet, next to Josie’s white dishes. Being roommates meant having company, and it also meant questioning the omnipresent rules she’d developed in her head for her daily life, rules about things like matching dishes. She had to learn to unclench a little.
Later that week another package came addressed to Darla, so Josie left it in the same place and didn’t think much of it.
The curious part about these seemingly-random packages, which began to appear with increasing frequency, was that there was no rhyme or reason to what arrived. Soon Darla was on a first-name basis with Luis, the formerly anonymous UPS guy. Josie had seen him before, maybe once a month. Darla’s room, and then the kitchen were increasingly cluttered with key chains and mugs and anything else a brand name could be printed on. One box arrived with fifty romance novels, all of them historical romance of the type that Josie remembered Aunt Cathy reading voraciously when they were younger.
As Darla opened them, she burst out laughing. “This is one of Mama’s favorite authors,” she said, scrunching up her face.
They were in jammies, hanging out, watching Downton Abbey, which Josie had introduced Darla to. Both had become Edwardian fans in an instant, scandalized by the wealthy family’s aristocratic pursuits. Josie was flopping around the apartment in sweatpants four sizes too large, rolled up at the cuffs around her ankles, and a tank top. She didn’t remember where she’d gotten the sweatpants, they had just become the comfort pants that she wore when she wanted to plow through a pint of ice cream or just feel blah all day. So far, today, success.
“Your mom sent you fifty romance novels that you’ll probably never read?”
Darla pursed her lips and thought about that for a minute. “Hold on,” she said, walking over to the small table at the entrance of the apartment and grabbing her flip phone. She auto dialed, and then from a distance Josie could hear her Aunt Cathy’s raspy voice. Listening only to Darla’s side of the conversation, Josie was fascinated.