"I don't know, but she used to give them a regular pot of her paycheck."
"And I thought the Catholics were bad," says Chickie, "with the collection plate under your nose every time you turn around. You don't keep anything for yourself, to buy yourself clothes or something?"
Gwen shakes her head. "The Family buys our clothes for us."
"You're kiddin. They pick them out and all?"
"Clothes aren't important."
Chickie laughs. "Tell that to the gang in Filene's Basement. Clothes ont impawtant."
"At the house we all wear plain white robes."
"Like in a choir."
"Sort of."
"You all live together?"
"There's more than one house."
"And you all eat together?"
"Yes. And when I go out working they pack me a lunch."
"Jeez."
"My mother packs my lunch," says Mary, "on the jawbs where the food is lousy." Mary and Kathleen both live with their mothers.
"And is there somebody who's like, you know, the big cheese? The center of the whole outfit?"
"We believe in God — "
"No, not Him, I mean somebody real, somebody living."
"The Family is the center of everything. We do things as a Family."
"And you pray together I bet. I seen you with your eyes closed here — "
"I'm meditating."
"Oh. You're into that too." Chickie shakes her head, skeptical. "I don't know, Gwen. The living together I could handle, if you got enough room, and the eating and the singing and all that. But I'd never let them pick my clothes out. Never."
Rummaging through her desk for another pen, Nina finds an old photograph. A large, very old photograph lining one of the drawers. Three rows of girls in baggy middy blouses and ankle-length skirts. It has a sepia cast to it but hasn't faded much. The girls are in their early teens, and many of them are pregnant. A bunch in the back row are trying to hold in laughter, covering their faces, turning their heads to the side. Somebody made a wisecrack.
What a nice way, thinks Nina. Surrounded by friends in the same situation. She shows it to the others and puts it up on the wall by her desk.
"Unwed mothers," says Kathleen. "They told us how after the Civil War there were all these kids walking around with no place to go, and a lot of the girls got into trouble. So the society ladies in Boston stotted this place up. At least that's what they told us."
"They got all kinds now," says Mary. "Little boys and girls. You'll see in the cafeteria."
"Now that's what you get," says Chickie da Costa studying the photograph, "you let other people pick your clothes out."
Deke comes over and smiles at them.
"Hey girls," he says. "You're falling behind."
Deke's job is to take the stuffed envelopes, seal them and run them through the postage meter. Somehow he barely manages to stay ahead of them.
Barbara has drawn teeth on an owl, is writing a name in the blank, letter by letter, taking her time.
Deke looks at Nina. "You're new here."
"That's right."
Deke smiles at her, stands looking down at her work.
"You're pretty."
Chickie snorts. Mary and Kathleen giggle.
Nina fills out a card. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Capadilupo.
"My name's Deke. I don't think we've met."
"I'm Nina," she says without looking up. Chickie groans.
"Would you like to have lunch with me?"
He's sitting on her desk now, blocking the light from the window.
"Look," says Nina, sighing, staring up at him, "don't waste your time. You're not half as sharp as you like to think you are. Forget it, okay?"
Chickie snorts and the Southie girls cover their faces.
Deke fingers the medallion that hangs against his chest. He shrugs, stands.
"You girls got more work for me?"
2F DESIRE SRD F, SPACIOUS ROOM, BACK BAY, NONSMOKER, MUST LIKE CATS, $80 MO. PLUS UTIL. CALL FOR INTERVIEW.
It was a very nice apartment. It was on Commonwealth, on the top floor, and the living room got a lot of sun late in the day. One of the cats played with an old tennis ball in a square patch of sun broken by the outline of the hanging coleus plants.
"What's that like," asked Melanie, "temporary work?"
Nina shrugged. "Mostly filing, some typing if you're fast enough. They send you around to different offices that have some big job they need out in a hurry. Or else it's just cheaper for them to hire temps. They don't have to pay any benefits."
"I worked for a while in an office," says Alissa. Alissa had long, straight blond hair. Melanie had black hair just growing out from a frizzy permanent. "It was the pits."
Alissa was still in school, and Melanie was out but taking classes.
"I take one at joy of Movement," she said. "And an acting workshop and then there's this woman I do Tai Chi with."
"It gets pretty low-key around here," said Alissa. "I think you can always tell by the cats in a house. If the cats are all hyper, running around chewing things and not using their box, then you've got problems in the house."
"Where have you been living?"
"In Cambridge," said Nina. There were drawings from Lewis Carroll up on the walls. There were bayberry candles — Nina could smell them though they weren't lit. "My roommate's boyfriend moved in and there just wasn't enough space."
"All my classes are at night," said Melanie, "and a lot of the time Alissa stays over with this guy Greg. We wouldn't be in each other's way much of the time."
"We don't do any big number with eating," said Alissa. "The refrigerator and the oven work fine. We leave notes to make sure the cats get fed."
"You'd probably have to have a phone, wouldn't you? For them to tell you where to go in the morning."
"You don't have one?" Nina had noticed the jack sticking out of the wall when she came in.
"You could have it in your room."
"We're not here a lot of the time, but it's good to have a sort of base of operations. You'd usually have the nights to yourself." Another cat was sleeping in Alissa's lap. "If you wanted to have somebody stay over that's fine, as long as things stay pretty low-key."
"I may be moving to Vermont," said Melanie. "But I don't know. I've got friends up there. They've got this farm, and it's you know, like a group effort but people come and go. I don't know, I've heard it's real cold up there."
"If Melanie was to move," said Alissa, stroking the cat's head, "I'd take her room and you could move into mine. You'd have a window then."
There is a small table in the cafeteria set aside for the Career Girls. Miss McCurdy takes her lunch at her desk back up in the office. At the long tables there are counselors with bunches of grade-school kids. Eating, laughing, playing with each other.
"I thought of going to secretarial school," says Mary, "but it costs an om and a leg." Mary and Kathleen want to be hired for permanent jobs at one of the big insurance companies.
"I could get up fifty more words a minute, they'd send me out for typing and I'd get hired in no time. That's what most of the girls do, they find a place they like and do a good jawb and get asked to stay on permanent."
"Yeah, that's prawbly the smottest way," says Chickie. "Why should Career Girls make all the money and we do all the work?"
"Did you ever think of getting together," says Nina, "and trying to get a bigger cut of what the employer pays out?"
"What, like a union? Never work. The regular employees, the secretaries, they don't even have one. How you gonna get temps, they don't know each other, they don't work the same place from day to day, how you gonna get them together?"
"We have a lot in common."
"Sure, we're all stupid, workin for peanuts. We should get on regular, like Mary says."