Chapter Five
“We need a planning meeting for the premeeting meeting. Can you schedule that?”
Josie rolled her lips inward and bit gently to keep from saying a single word.
“I picked six random accounts to audit this weekend. I’m going to need office supplies, and I noticed our supply checklist is missing. I can’t take office supplies home without recording it on a supply checklist. Should we have a quick meeting about this?”
For once, Josie and her brain were in accord. Her boss, Ben Jorgenson, was a well-intentioned menace.
“Ben. No one can fit another meeting into their schedules this week.”
Josie spoke calmly and without rolling her eyes or flicking her fingers against his forehead. Her gold medal in patience awaited her. What she wanted to do was ask him why he’d spend the weekend auditing when he should be spending it getting laid, but that would bump her down to bronze.
Ben glanced up at her, confused, and for the thousandth time she wished Nordic blue-eyed blond hotties were her type. Her boss smelled good, liked to cook, and never talked down to her—catnip for most women.
Instead, all day Josie had mulled over Pax’s expression when Amos had been playing with the gargoyle, trying to come up with an interpretation putting him in a better light. Maybe he was worried Amos might fall and hurt himself? Maybe he had a sudden bout of gas? Maybe…
“What if we held it to fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes is reasonable,” Ben said.
Josie was finished, though. “No. No meeting. I’ll print out a new checklist.”
A wrinkle of disappointment arced between Ben’s eyebrows, but Josie had no sympathy.
Since menopause had descended on the office, she was the only one who had the patience to deal with the director of financial aid.
Yesterday, Jenna had threatened to set fire to his premeeting packets and Barbara had begun researching assassins on the dark web.
“Gotta run.” Josie backed out of the office, smiling apologetically. “Time to pick up Amos from daycare.”
Luckily, Ben was a single parent as well. He waved her off without saying anything, even though she could tell by the way he tightened his mouth he felt a few more meetings were in order.
The best part about working for the university was on-site daycare.
Within a half an hour of leaving work, Josie and Amos were walking home in the slowly gathering darkness.
Once past the university they turned onto East Avenue.
This street was home to a few of the city’s largest homes as well as a science museum and planetarium.
Josie sent another quick thanks to the universe for providing a place for her to live that didn’t require a bus everywhere, since she couldn’t afford a car.
Amos told her a story about his best friend, Jalyn, while groups of students ran past, kicking up dirty wet snow. As cars sped by, Josie grabbed Amos’s hand at the stoplight, her brain deciding to treat her to a scenario where she lost her grip on his mitten, and he went flying into the road.
The apartment building shone like a beacon in the late-winter dusk, lights blazing through the Palladian windows in the lobby and the holly bush’s glossy leaves sparkling in the borrowed light.
Amos sang the wrong lyrics to pop songs while Josie stopped in the lobby to check the mailbox.
They had been here a week and Josie hadn’t gotten any mail.
This was in direct contrast to the family living on the top floor.
Every day enough cardboard boxes to fill Josie’s apartment two times over sat on the ledge.
Josie glanced around the deserted lobby.
A thin layer of dust had settled on the metal lip overhanging the mailboxes and a large crack in the shape of a finger on the plaster wall pointed east. Pax had said something about not having a cleaner when she first toured the apartment, and it showed. Even one of the gargoyles was missing.
“Where’s that guy?” Amos asked, pointing at the empty niche.
“I don’t know,” Josie answered. Intrigued, she leaned over to read the labels on the boxes. Nosy, yes, but what if the recipients were movie stars or Mafia or hidden royalty?
Smith. The last name on the packages was Smith. There wasn’t an apartment number, just Seventh Floor. Did they have the entire top floor of the building?
In the pile were three BoxyCharm, one Illumicrate, and two Adore Me subscription boxes, all made out to Miss Smith. Hidden royalty started to sound plausible.
Oh my God. That huge box was from Bergdorf Goodman.
The only time Josie had been in Bergdorf’s was by accident and it had left her shaken for days, discovering there were enough people in the world wealthy enough to keep a store selling $6,000 handbags in business.
When Josie had confided this to Dan, his mother, Gloria, had overheard.
Ever since, Gloria would make a point of mentioning which pieces of clothing she’d bought at Bergdorf’s, tilt her head, fake-smile, and say, “I know you’re thinking I’m part of the one percent, but being well dressed doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?” in a high voice, like a little girl.
The lights in the lobby flickered and dimmed.
Josie let Amos lead her away from the piles of packages to climb the stairs.
Amos sang a song to the birds entwined in the decorative balusters and Josie forced her brain to focus on what to make for supper instead of worrying about Gloria and any new ways she might have come up with to torture Josie.
“This is unacceptable!”
Amos and Josie froze in their tracks as the scent of burnt sugar filled the air. Slowly they turned and stared down at the lobby.
A woman so beautiful she didn’t look human stood there, hands on hips.
She wore a formfitting blue silk dress with a star-pleated neckline showing off her flawless black skin.
Her hands were hidden by wrist-length gloves and covering her hair was a shiny black turban with a gold starburst pin sitting in the center—like a ’50s model come to life.
The woman looked up and snared Josie with a pair of remarkable amber-colored eyes. She held a clipboard in one gloved hand and wielded a sharpened pencil in the other.
“Are any of these yours, Mrs. LaChiusa?” the woman asked, pencil pointing at the stack of cardboard boxes.
“Ah, no. And it’s Ms., umm, Ms. La—”
“The apartment rules and regulations are posted prominently,” the woman said. “Packages are to be retrieved in a timely manner. These have been sitting here all day. This is a fire hazard.”
Josie simply nodded, her words having dried up from intimidation.
The elevator doors opened and out tumbled what appeared to be an entire cheer squad. The noise of so many young women talking at once and the jaw-dropping bedazzlement of their cheer uniforms pushed Josie’s question about how the elevator fit that many people out of her head.
Twelve teens bounced around the lobby, each in a different color and style of cheer uniform.
Most of them resembled professional football cheerleaders, thousands of crystals adorning every centimeter of their satin hot pants, belly-baring tops, and enormous hair bows.
Some were short with wide faces and round calves, others were tall and almost skeletal, their skin varying in shade from the darkest black to a creamy peach and the hair colors ranging from a hennaed red to bright blue.
“Misses Smiths,” the older woman snapped. “I am warning you…and you and you…”
“M-A-D-D-Y! Maddy’s in charge, we don’t ask why!” The spontaneous cheer rang out while the teens fell into a loose formation, stomping their feet and clapping their hands in time with the rhyme.
The two smallest cheerleaders hopped onto the shoulders of the larger ones and another cheer rang out.
“We’ve come to get our pack-a-ges and take them home, then win, win, win!”
The two tiny cheerleaders flipped off their supports and stuck their landings while the rest of the group jumped up and down, cheering like mad.
A cheerleader walked over to Maddy, whom Josie now recognized as the tenants’ association president from her photo on the wall.
This cheerleader might have been a coach or a chaperone.
She was in a vintage cheer costume and the only bedazzlement to be seen were the sequins sewn on the letter H adorning her sweater.
Of average height with dusky olive skin and ebony hair pulled back in a ponytail with a discreet little white bow, she looked to be in her early twenties.
“Sorry, Maddy,” the quiet cheerleader said. “We had a little delay—”
“Cindy had a meltdown,” someone interjected. “She lost a bet to Mindy and had to eat ten of those silicon pouches labeled ‘Don’t eat this silicon pouch.’ ”
“You’d have a meltdown, too. You don’t know constipation until you eat a handful of those,” a green-and-silver-bedazzled cheerleader, Cindy most likely, announced, hands on hips.
“—but we’ll clear this away, right this minute.”
The others cheered again and grabbed boxes.
“What’s conthipashon?” Amos asked. Josie took hold of his hand, meaning to lead him back to the apartment, when a cheerleader squealed.
“That’s them. The new gu—ow, the new tenants!”
The entire sparkling horde advanced on them and Amos pressed himself against Josie’s leg.
“Oh. My. God. That child is cute!” one squealed.
“Do you like Taylor Swift?”
“How many times have you streamed the Eras Tour?”
“How old are you?”
Josie and Amos walked up the stairs backward, one step at a time, unable to answer any of the rapid-fire questions.
“Did you get your boots at a thrift store? Thrifting is the new buying, you know.”
“Have you ever been to an outlet mall? Is it truly a paradise?”
“Noticed anything different about this building since you moved in?”
“Stop!”
The cheerleaders paused, one having already reached the staircase, a greedy look on her thin face.