“We still don’t know what we’re doing and it’s forty years later,” Juliet says. We’re making a slow transition back to the business of the cookie party. Juliet closes her eyes. “More things change, the more they stay the same.” And she automatically touches her chain as though for reassurance.

Vera says, “Uh, got that right.” She has an uncanny way of reading people’s secrets and accepting them as she accommodates her own. She expects each of us to have them.

Secrets.

Sometimes, like Juliet, entire secret lives. Sometimes, like Vera, secret pasts. Then there’re things we only tell very few, or maybe only one other person. Juliet meets my eyes and winks. Sometimes, like for Charlene, there are things we simply can’t communicate. Sometimes secrets are simply events that we aren’t yet close enough to each other to tell.

“Hey, the cookies!” Laurie nags.

“So. You should be a boss, someone’s boss,” Rosie says.

“I am. Olivia’s.”

We all laugh except for Vera, who stands beside her Trader Joe’s bags in her professional clothes. She always dresses with flair. The beiges and russets of her blouse complement her short blond hair. The most glamorous of us still, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike with implanted boobs done during her dancing days and eyes the blue of a cloudless sky. Unlike Marilyn’s, Vera’s smile is enthusiastic without timidity or childlike reticence. She told me once that she was shy when she was a kid. Beaten down by extreme poverty and an abusive father. But now Vera, professional Vera, is my best salesperson. She is expert at long-term care, gentle with people concerned about their future health. Warm, able to listen carefully to her clients and tailor a program for them, reassure them through the process and the anxiety of being accepted if they have health issues, Vera makes the most sales. Her confidence has been hard-won. And tonight she brought in a client that I predicted would walk. A salesperson is a salesperson and just like she teased the sale of herself—the tease being the hook for the continued interest—she’s able to sell insurance.

I remember when I met her. Rough years for both of us. Both of us single moms. She didn’t have the confidence then that she exudes now. Her childhood shyness was shellacked with bravado to hide her vulnerability. When the Gandy Dancer hired her as a waitress and asked me to train her, she wasn’t sure of anything.

“You ever do this before?”

“What? Work in a bar?”

“No. Wait tables.”

She giggled. And shook her head.

“How’d you get this job? Usually they start people as bussers.”

She shrugged and I suddenly noticed her figure. “Oh.” Carl, the manager, had a weakness for women with big breasts and Vera had obviously charmed her way into the job.