He got her a cart at the door and got rid of her before she got a word out.
"Here." He pulled one out of the rack, turned it around, pushed it at her. "Yours."
Luna looked at it.
"We're not going together?"
"Faster this way. Divide and conquer." He was already stepping back. "Get what you need. I'll find you."
"What are you getting?"
"Stuff. I've got a list."
He did not have a list.
The official reason was efficiency.
The actual reason was that when they came in, a cashier had looked at Luna, then at him, then back at Luna.
She was way too beautiful for him. She was six foot three and she looked like that; he was five foot six and he looked like this. What would people think? He hated it.
He'd drawn her for six years. He had never once pictured being seen with her.
So he drifted.
He spent a while among the batteries and the extension cords, a category of object he had no use for and no intention of buying, turning packets over and reading the backs of them. Then he did the same thing to a shelf of lightbulbs. It was a waste of a morning he had gotten out of bed specifically to not waste.
✦ ✦ ✦
Luna found him by the bulbs.
"There you are."
Josh turned around and started to say something and didn't finish it, because of the cart.
It was full of meat, packed up over the rim, riding low on its wheels.
Then he registered that she only had one hand on it.
The other hand was on the second one.
"Take these two," Luna said. "I'm not finished."
"You're not—"
She was already going.
Josh stood between two loaded carts in the middle of an aisle and got his phone out.
He didn't open the calculator. He opened the bank.
He looked at the two carts: all meat, most of it steak. So the spreadsheet had been right.
ItemPer dayHer food$603.12His own costs ($1,864 a month ÷ 30.4 days)$61.32Together$664.44His payout was $10,186.42 a month. $10,186.42 ÷ $664.44 a day:
15 days.
A month's money would last them fifteen days. Two weeks, not a month.
And that was before tax.
ItemPer month$10,186.42Food and costs−$20,198.85To the IRS−$2,428.65Out of his savings−$12,441.08Under his checking balance, in the same gray font, was his savings. It was a lot bigger, and it had grown a little every month for six years.
He didn't tap it.
He had never tapped it for a reason like this and he was not going to start standing in a supermarket. He put the phone in his pocket.
Then he went after her, for two reasons.
The first was to see how she was filling carts that fast, and to stop her before it got any worse.
The second was the fridge. There was no fridge. There was a mini fridge with nothing in it, and there was already more food in these carts than that fridge would hold if you took the shelves out.
He found her two sections over with a third cart.
The third cart was full.
"Stop!" Josh grabbed the cart. "Stop. Right there."
Luna looked up with a pack of steaks in each hand.
"I'm nearly done."
"You're completely done. You're finished. This is the end of it."
Luna looked into the third cart and checked it over. Then she nodded.
"Fine," she said. "That's enough anyway."
✦ ✦ ✦
Then she took all three.
Josh had been standing there working out how to do this in two trips. While he was working it out, Luna got a hand on the first cart and brought the second one in against it and the third came in behind that, and she walked the entire arrangement toward the front of the store at ordinary walking speed.
Nothing about her changed. She didn't get bigger. She didn't put anything extra out. Her arms stayed arms the whole time, an ordinary width, hanging off ordinary shoulders, and she moved four hundred pounds of food through a supermarket with the mild expression of a girl carrying a handbag.
"Okay," Josh said, following her. "That settles it. From now on you do all the physical stuff. All of it. Everything. Permanently."
Luna kept walking.
"Last night was the last time we're discussing it," he said. "It's decided. It's policy."
"Why are you so weak?"
"What?"
"You're a grown man. This is three carts." She still didn't look back. "I watched you carry four bags and then lie down for three days."
"Yeah?" Josh said.
Josh didn't care.
✦ ✦ ✦
They were a few steps from his door when the voice came up the stairwell behind them.
"Josh? Is that you?"
Josh stopped.
"Oh, my." Footsteps, and quick ones. "That is a girl. Damn. Never thought you had it in you."
"Hey, Rodey." Josh turned around. "Long time no see. Sorry about last night. The neighbors are mad now."
Rodey got an arm around his shoulders and pulled him aside. Luna went past both of them with all of it, put her shoulder to the door, and took it inside.
"So." Rodey watched her go through the doorway. It took a moment. "Hey. How did you manage to pull this giantess? What's your secret?"
"I didn't pull her. It's just — complicated situation. And now she's here."
"Don't pull that bullshit." Rodey let go of him. "Complicated situation. Ha. Right. And the moon landing was fake." He put a hand flat on the wall beside Josh's head. "Tell me seriously. How did you pull her?"
"I said my line. It's your choice to believe it."
"Ah, fine." He backed off half a step. "At least tell me. How far along are you? When did you first meet? Which milestone did you get?"
"I met her this week. And no. Nothing's progressed."
"But she helped you carry those—" Rodey stopped. He looked back down the hall at the door, and then at Josh, and started grinning. "Well. She was the one carrying."
"Rodey."
"Oh. So you're into that type." He nodded slowly. "I see."
"Hey. Don't get the wrong idea."
"Oh, right? Now it's a wrong idea." Rodey put both hands up. "Listen. We're homies. I appreciate your win — I genuinely do, I'm happy for you. But you need to come clean. Be honest with yourself." He lowered the hands. "Otherwise things don't work out. Trust me. I learnt that one the hard way."
"Yeah. Yeah." Josh leaned back against the wall. "Whatever. Let's drop this."
The door opened.
"Where does all of this go?" Luna said, from the doorway. "The fridge is too small."
"Right — on that note." Josh came off the wall. "Rodey, is your fridge empty? We might have bought too much."
Rodey didn't appear to hear that.
"Hey," he said, past him, to Luna. "So where do you live? Is your fridge full too? Did you buy that much stuff?"
"I live here." Luna pointed at Josh's door. "And I don't have my own fridge."
Rodey's eyes went wide.
(Rodey:They live together. He's letting her stay. Is this temporary, or has it already gone that far — in a week?
My man. Josh. You are a player.
But hold on. This complicates things.)
"As far as I know," Rodey said slowly, "there's only room for one single bed in there. Isn't that cramped?"
He stopped himself.
"But first. Are you staying here temporarily, or permanently?"
"As long as he is alive," Luna said.
(Rodey:GODDAMN IT. MY GOAT JOSH HAS GAME. HE HAS ALREADY SECURED THIS TALL QUEEN AS HIS LIFE PARTNER. IN A WEEK.)
Rodey looked at Josh and waited for him to laugh it off.
Josh didn't. He'd already heard it at the Embassy: she stayed until he died.
Rodey took that as a yes.
"Ahem." He straightened his shoulders out. "So. Josh, and — what's your name, miss?"
"Luna."
"Yes. Yes. Josh and Luna." He brought his hands together in front of him. "You have a one-time offer."
"...Okay."
"There's a one-bedroom on the fifth floor. Fully furnished. You can move in. The upgrade's free."
Josh came off the wall again.
"Wait. That's — that's too much to offer." It was only a one-bedroom. Next to his studio, it was a mansion. "Are you saying a whole apartment, fully furnished, is rent free?"
"Yup."
"Why?"
"My father would hate to see you die alone." Rodey shrugged. "Besides, we'd be neighbours then. Fifth floor is really fun."
Josh didn't have anything ready for that.
"Thanks for the offer," he said. "We need to think about it. I'll call you today. So — bye for now."
"Hey." Luna, from the doorway. "Does the new apartment have a big fridge?"
"Of course. It's pre-furnished. Proper standard fridge."
Luna turned and looked at Josh.
The look said: Once again, me just being here made your life better. You owe me more.
✦ ✦ ✦
They went inside and had a fight about it.
Not about the apartment. They both wanted the apartment and that took no time. The fight was about whose apartment it was.
"That happened because he's my friend," Josh said. "I've known Rodey for years. I looked after his father."
"He offered it after I spoke."
"He offered it because—"
"He offered it after I spoke." Luna set a bag down. "You were standing there. You heard what order things happened in."
"That's not — okay. Okay." Josh threw his hands up. "Why would a landlord give away a furnished one-bedroom because a tall girl said one sentence at him in a hallway?"
"I don't know," Luna said. "Why would he?"
Nobody won. They went around it twice more and then let it go, both of them holding the exact position they'd started from.
The call came in the afternoon.
By that night they were sleeping in the new place, because moving Josh turned out not to be a large operation. There were the groceries, which had never made it into a fridge on account of there being no fridge to put them in.
And there was the desk.
That was it. That was everything he owned that wouldn't go in a bag.
Luna took the desk on her own and carried it up to the fifth floor without setting it down once.
Josh carried the chair.
That night he opened the bank again, sitting in a room that was bigger than his whole last place and cost him nothing. The gray number underneath was exactly where he had left it.
He still didn't tap it.