Box Girl Read Free Page B

conditioning.
    Unfortunately, after three weeks, we found jobs. We moved to Santa Monica because it was the only part of LA any of us had ever heard of, and I’m fairly certain that had something to do with a late-’90s Sheryl Crow song. Our apartment building was a shutter-less stucco box, painted a shade of warm salmon, the address written in loopy, spearmint cursive. It looked like something out of Sinatra-era Palm Springs, just shittier. We were pleasantly surprised to find the windows had no screens, because apparently there are no bugs in California, but less pleased to learn the apartment came with no refrigerator, because apparently LA renters are expected to lug those along as if they were fresh towels or a new set of sheets.
    There is a whole underground market for used refrigerators in LA. We found ours on Craigslist, where we found most everything those days—our couch, a coffee table, my 1989 BMW convertible with a CD player that skipped when I drove over bumps. Armed with a wad of cash, which was no doubt split three ways—as if we planned on dividing the fridge three ways when we moved into our own one-bedroom apartments a year later—we met the sellers on a manicured corner of San Vicente Boulevard. (For at least a year, we called San Vicente and Abbott Kinney “The Bermuda Triangle” because, unlike every other street in LA that shoots pin-straight until eternity,these boulevards defiantly existed on diagonals, crissing and crossing other sane streets, leaving virgin LA drivers like us feeling as though we’d just been spun around blindfolded before a whack at the piñata.)
    The refrigerator transaction took place on a Sunday morning. As the couple waited for us, a handsome dog panted alongside, attached to a leash that had been needle-pointed with someone’s initials. They looked like they had just finished a workout. Probably a hike. Twenty minutes late, we rolled up in various shades of hungover. I think it’s a decent bet that at least one of us wasn’t wearing a bra. The couple stood there smiling with their fridge, which was on a dolly. They owned a dolly. They said their new place came with its own fridge. Of course it did. They were in their late twenties, maybe early thirties—it was hard to tell back then—and they clearly had their shit together. I wiped under my eyes to remove the remnants of last night’s mascara and wondered if I’d ever be that put together on a Sunday morning. I bet they had already read The New York Times . Probably over a soy latte at an impossibly hip, fair-trade coffee shop after their hike.
    But we weren’t quite sure how to be adults yet. Our four years at The University of Colorado (we affectionately called it The Harvard of The Rockies) hadn’t armed us with much but liberal arts degrees and a superhuman ability to funnel beers at a high altitude. I studied journalism, which I’m not even sure is a major anymore; Rachel majored in painting, and I’ll leave that at that; and Heather majored in the “smart” slacker specialty: sociology. A few weeks before our pre-move trip to LA, Heather had a meeting with a career counselor and took one of those aptitude tests that says what you should do with the rest of your life. She called me crying from the parking lot immediately after. Through the crying/hyperventilating/mini panic attack that is the wheelhouse of recent grads, she said the counselor told her that she didn’treally have any career options, and that she probably should have thought about that before she decided to major in sociology. And that she should just go kill herself. (Heather added that part.)

    Shortly after we moved into our apartment, a Penske truck arrived with all of our belongings: whatever furniture was salvageable after four years of “Jungle Juice” parties in Boulder, our favorite books, framed pictures of our families, and five-pound Case Logics of