It's Complicated

by Julia Kent

  “This is a big city,” she said. “Nothing like Cleveland or Pittsburgh.”

  “No, it’s actually pretty small.”

  “Then it seems bigger,” Darla added.

  “That’s what she said,” Josie joked. The groan that came out of Darla made Josie realize that there was no hope that she was going back to bed. It was time to make some tea, sit down, and chat like sisters.

  “Let’s go have some tea and talk.” Josie showed her into the kitchen. It seemed completely surreal to have Darla here, in her escapee life. When she went back to Ohio, it bothered her how easily she fell back into speech patterns and habits of thought that were more from her childhood. Including little things, like craving a cigarette whenever they went to Jerry’s. She’d always had a cigarette with her beer until she moved to Boston, and decided that it wasn’t worth the fight to try to find a bar that let you smoke. And it also was unsophisticated, if not a bit trashy, at least in Boston, to be a smoker. Everyone where she came from smoked—though Darla, she’d noticed, had never picked up the habit.

  As she set the electric kettle going and pulled out about twenty boxes of teas, she heard Darla wandering through the rooms, and then…

  “Oh my god!”

  “What?” Josie said, trying not to shout and wake up the folks who lived above her.

  “This is my room?”

  “Yeah,” Josie winced, “it’s a bit small.”

  “It’s huge!” Darla came tearing back into the room, her flip-flops making a smacking noise that Josie knew was going to bug her after two days of listening to that.

  “It’s bigger than my shed.”

  “Barely.” Josie gestured to the boxes of tea and said, “Pick your poison.” Josie had known Darla would go straight for the lemon, and she did. “Your shed?”

  “I took that old shed out next to the trailer and turned it into my little place.”

  “You did?” Josie was intrigued. That thing had been there since they were kids, and was probably home to more muskrats and raccoons than anything else.

  “I cleaned it up real nice,” Darla said, looking up at the tall ceilings. “Man, it’s like something out of a movie in here.”

  Josie looked up. They were nine-foot ceilings with crown molding around the edges and large cracks through the plaster. It was an older building and she’d loved the charm, how it had been so different from anything she had grown up with in Ohio, and certainly a million miles away from her own home.

  “This looks like something out of one of those old-fashioned ice cream shops you see on TV—like in a movie from the 1920s.” Darla smiled, her eyes wild and her cheeks quite pink.

  How she could be this alert at one in the morning blew Josie away. The kettle whistled, and Josie poured the cups of tea, joining Darla in her Lemon Enjoyment. As they sat at the table, Darla craned her neck around the corner of a wall and looked in the living room again.

  “Cool. It looks like something you’d find at an apartment at Kent State.”

  “It’s just thrift-shop finds. You know how well we have that drilled into us.” The two shared a look that Josie could not exchange with any other human being on the planet.

  Darla nodded and took a sip. “That’s what my shed’s all about.”

  “So, tell me about your guys.”

  “My guys.” Peals of laughter poured out of Darla, and her chest shook as she giggled. “My guys. Yeah, I guess I have to think of them as my guys.”

  “My friend Laura thinks of hers as her guys.”

  Darla stopped cold, half dropping her mug of tea onto the table. “You know someone else who has guys?”

  “I know someone else who has guys.”

  “Holy shit!” Darla’s eyes widened, and she looked like she was about to choke on something. “So, I’m not the only one?”

  “You didn’t invent threesomes, Darla.”

  “It sure as hell feels like we did, me and Joe and Trevor. I haven’t said that aloud to anyone, Josie.”

  She could see the tension in Darla’s chest relax, her body going from that excited, wired sense that you get when you travel long distances by car to a relaxed, easygoing countenance. “You can talk about it here,” Josie said. “In fact, you’d better get pretty damn comfortable with it.”

  “With what?”

  “With talking about threesomes.”

  Darla’s face froze, brow furrowed in an expression of incredulity. The tip of her nose was pink and her ears turned red, as a flush crept up her neck and into her jaw. “Why?”

  “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 fucking kidding me.”

  “Well, you were squealing on the phone, Darla. ‘$40,000! $40,000! Holy fucking 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 fuckin’ 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 fuckin’ 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.

  “Hey, Mama…Yeah, I’m good…Yep, still visiting my friends when I’m not working…Yep, yep, Trevor’s still playin’…and Joe, too…I’m not gonna talk about that. Not gonna talk about that either.” The shine in Darla’s eyes faded with each comment. “Nope, not that either.” She frowned. “How’s Uncle Mike? I can change the subject if I want to. Yeah, speaking of changing subjects, Mama, what is this shit you’re sending me?”

  Josie heard Aunt Cathy shout, “SHIT? That ain’t shit!”

  Darla held the phone away from her ear about a foot and just shook her head. When the yelling stopped, she replaced the phone on her ear. “Okay, Mama, why do I have fifty romance novels from your favorite author?”

  A squeal of delight came through the phone, and again, Darla stretched her arm out to avoid being deafened. The sounds made Josie’s cat sprint from the room and hide under her bed.

  “I won! I won!”Josie could hear Aunt Cathy crowing.

  “You won what?” Darla barked towards the phone.

  “I won the fifty romance novel contest!” The elated voice came tinnily through the speaker.

  Josie froze, her eyes locking with Darla’s. They simultaneously put their hands on their hips, cocked their heads, and said quietly, “Contest?”

  “Contest, Mama?”Darla repeated, holding the phone close again.

  Josie couldn’t hear the answer anymore, but Darla’s face ran through about nineteen different emotions in two minutes of just listening to her mother. Her brow furrowed, then one eyebrow cocked up, then her eyes got wide, then she did a facepalm to the forehead, then she began pacing the length of the living room, her foot brushing against an old, braided rug that Josie had gotten for free when a previous upstairs neighbor had moving out.

  Finally, Darla said, “You’re using our address?” and Josie got it. She just shook her head and padded her way into the kitchen, Dame Maggie Smith on pause for quite a while, she imagined, before she and Darla would get back to the Abbey. As she made herself a cup of decaf, she waited, hearing intermittent bits of the conversation.

  “No, he’s not naked all the time. Yes, things are working out with Josie. My job? It’s going good. I don’t know, she’s got this doctor she might be…”

  Josie slammed the green fertilizer company mug on the counter, and poured herself a vicious cup of decaf, sprinkling a little cinnamon in for the hell of it and then adding a heavy dose of milk. She heard the snap of a phone shutting, and then the slam of it against a table.

  “You won’t believe this one!” Darla shouted.

  “Let me guess—she’s using this address and your name for sweeping.”

  The look of genuine shock on Darla’s face, as if she couldn’t put together a paint-by-numbers scenario that all added up to one color, made Josie laugh.

  “That’s exactly what she’s been doing. How did you guess?”

  “It’s the most logical explanation for why we’re getting all this crap.”

  “Don’t tell me that a foam toilet paperweight from a pharmaceutical company is crap now, Josephine. It is perfectly good winnings, with a manufacturer’s retail value of $13, which Mama will use to calculate out her hourly rate of $3.22 for all her hard work.” Darla had taken on the supercilious tone of Cathy at her best, and it made Josie shrug and smile.

  “You know, I don’t care if she does this if it makes her happy,” Josie said.

  Darla sighed with relief, her shoulders dropping. She folded herself into a chair, her breasts reminding Josie of Laura’s swell. They seemed to have gotten, in triplicate, everything that Josie had not received from the Endowment Fairy, and she wondered what it would be like to be that lush. Had Alex found her wanting? Was her boyish figure not quite what he needed? Why was she even torturing herself like this? She was the one who had stopped even trying. Then again, he was the one who accused her of violating the most basic of professional trusts.

  “I think we can expect a steady supply of this stuff. I’m glad you say that you don’t mind ’cuz Mama seemed so happy to be able to now have two addresses where she could sweep from, and she said that if we get anything good that she can use to please send it back to her, otherwise it’s ours to keep, and it’s her way of thinking about us in the big city.”

  Josie held up the green mug with gusto. “To Cathy,” she said. Darla scrambled to get a glass of water and the two toasted to Darla’s mom and Josie’s stalwart aunt.

  “What kinds of contests does she enter, Darla?”

  “Cash, trips, kitchen makeovers, new houses, gift cards to restaurants, jewelry, books, magazine subscriptions, although she stopped doing that when we got about two hundred of ’em. That kind of stuff.”

  “So, you could win any of those things?”

  “I could win a year’s supply of LSAT tutoring, for all I know,” Darla said. “It’s never anything good, it’s always this crazy stuff that companies are giving away ’cuz they’re tryin’ to boost morale or—spread the word about
their product. At one point Mama found a glitch in the software for one of these websites, and we won three hundred stuffed hot dogs.”

  “Three hundred what?”

  “Stuffed hot dog plush toys, yeah,” Darla said. “Mama took a bunch of ’em and shoved ’em in a pillowcase and said it was a pillow. The rest she gave to some humane society shelter for the dogs. It’s what she does and it makes her happy.”

  “At least now we know where all this is coming from.” Josie wandered back and started fishing through the box of books. “Her Highlander’s Heinie?” She looked at Darla. “Seriously?”

  Darla shrugged. “I’ve heard worse.” They laughed.

  “I guess it can’t be any worse than Downton Abbey, right?” Josie said. “Shouldn’t we get back to find out what James will do next and with which nobleman?”

  Darla threw her arms around Josie suddenly. The hug caught her off guard, but she liked it. No one had touched her in days. “Thank you, Josie.”

  “Thank you,” she said, pulling back. “You’re helping me make some sense of this crazy business we’re both working in.”

  “Once we get this figured out, let’s move on to your crazy love life.”

  “My love life isn’t crazy, it’s nonexistent.”

  “Why aren’t you with him?” Darla said, her face suddenly serious. Those big green eyes went all innocent and sad, reminding Josie of how Darla had looked that day. How she had questioned Mrs. Humboldt about being dragged home to pack a bag, how her face had been so cherubic, and sweet, and needy.

  “Because he thinks I did something unethical, and was a jerk before I had the chance to explain.”

  “Ooooooh. Ouch.”

  “Yeah, ouch.” Tears filled Josie’s eyes as the reality of what she said really sank in.

  “You really love him, don’t you?” Darla said softly. The empathy in her tone made Josie’s tears spill over her lower lids and pour down her cheeks.

  “I don’t know what I feel for him.”

  “I do. It’s called love. You never cry over guys.”

  “I cried over Davey Rockland.”

  “That’s because he drove over your foot when he was learning how to drive his go-kart.”