The T car squealed and screeched. Jane figured they did that even while standing still, just to keep in practice. "You sure you know where this place is?"
"Totally," said Daria. "It's almost a straight shot up Tremont, or whatever that street is." She did not have to turn her head to know that Jane was eyeing her skeptically. "Left at the donut shop, then right at the pub, past the empty storefront, and it's just up the flight of stairs where the down stairs are blocked by a metal grille."
Daria monotoning through the least specific directions in Boston could have just been trolling, but Jane knew her more than well enough to hear the slight caress of whimsy. Fault her for many things, but she was without doubt a writer with a sense-of-place detector that never quit.
"And I've been there, like, four times," Daria added. Then the squeal of the railway made conversation impossible.
At the next stop, they piled out of the train, flowed with the crowd up the stairs and out into the open air. An intolerable summer day had become a mild summer night.
"And there you two are!" She met the two of them at the edge of the park, across the way from the movie multiplex whose floodlit plate-glass facade illumined the intersection. Her hair was in a single ponytail now. Her capris were longer than the skirt she sported in several years' worth of memories, but Jane could hardly object to how well they followed her thighs and set off her calves.
"Hi," Daria said, before Brittany took her off balance with a one-arm hug. Her other arm was free to embrace Jane.
Me like strong woman, Jane thought.
She saw Daria relax, infinitesimally by appearance but, for Daria, quite significantly. Somehow all this worked with three when it had been strange and frightening with two. A pair of college girls out in public with their fashion choices were quite possibly queer. The three of them together, with the bubbly completion of their triad, scanned as a girls' night out.
And of course, none of this could have happened in the first place with only two. So many weeks of awkwardness and confusion, guilt and bad dreams. Then Brittany had come to town, they had taken her to a party to help her over the moving shock, and then somehow Brittany had been posing the two of them as demos for how football players made the moves on chicks.
Brittany loosed her grip enough for Daria and Jane to stand on either side of her and begin strolling towards dinner. Her fingers left Daria's back just a little too slowly and with slightly too much tracing with nail to be wholly innocent. "So what's good at this place?"
Daria suggested, "The mushroom suanla chaoshou. Yu Xiang eggplant. Black pepper seitan. Sweet lemon tofu."
Brittany bobbed her head and giggled, just briefly. Daria liked introducing her to new things outside the assumed comfort zone of Lawndale cheerleader, and Brittany liked her doing it.
"And," Daria continued, "they have a mocktail menu. I like the no-jito. I figure Jane will get the absurdly tropical thing with lots of layers."
"Can't go wrong with a curly straw," Jane said.
"Oh, anything after a day like today. You have no idea how happy I am to get out of the gym."
Brittany had been melancholy at Great Prairie State. She'd come to Boston to work, had become an exercise instructor at a local fitness place, had found some extra part-time gigs getting photographed for athletic wear and sometimes perfume or skin-cream ads. The thought still struck Jane at irregular intervals that holy shit, I'm dating a model.
To her amusement, Jane discovered that Daria's directions had been substantially accurate.
Later, in the narrow hallway to the restaurant bathrooms, where nobody was watching, Jane kissed spicy chili oil from Daria's lips.
And still later, Brittany was cuddling into Jane in Jane's loft bed. "You've got garlic breath," Brittany said.
"You do too."
Daria was curled under a jacket atop a big purple beanbag chair. "Me, I've got it coming out of my pores," she observed.
Jane asked, "Is that an invitation?"
" 'It would be if I weren't so tired,' " whispered Brittany.
"It would be if I weren't..." Daria yawned. "Good night, dual darlings."
"Good night," Brittany said aloud.
"Night, love," said Jane.