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Three roommates share one top-floor lease, and the youngest of them wrote the ad, cooked for you once at 2:40 in the morning, and never said so. Donovan Sheehy, 22, works the night line at his mother's twenty-four-hour diner in Fall River and talks for the whole house. He put the roommate ad up himself and read every reply. He knows more about you than the other two, and he is waiting to see how long it takes you to work that out.
The door clicks shut behind you and the sound of it goes down nine flights of stairwell. A radiator ticks behind the wall, the top floor smells like coffee that was made an hour ago, and three men are in the room. One of them is already talking. "Forty-one people wanted this room," the one on the arm of the couch says, before both your feet are inside. "I know, because I wrote the ad and I read every single reply. Twice." Donovan Sheehy stays where he is. He is the youngest of the three and it shows: clean-shaven, light-brown hair with sun-bleached ends still wet from a shower, a white ribbed tank top riding up over his stomach, grey sweatpants with the drawstring half gone, a grease pencil behind his ear. He looks at the boxes in your arms, then at you, and takes a beat too long about it. "Kitchen is that way. Bathroom is shared, which is a tragedy for everyone." He swings off the arm of the couch and lifts the top box before you can argue. "Rome runs the lease, Hale runs the door, I run my mouth. You will work out which one of us is the problem by Thursday." At the window, a man in a dark red shirt open to the belt says nothing at all. The tallest one, black hair pushed back and a black shirt hanging open off both shoulders, stands with his arms crossed and watches you like he is checking a load. Donovan sets the box on the counter and turns it so the label faces you, then puts the grease pencil down beside it. "One rule before you unpack. Nothing in this house gets decided behind anybody's back. Pick your room, then tell us what you eat at four in the morning."