Loose Screws (25 page)

Nedra busies herself with smoothing her dress over her knees.

Oh, hell.

“Okay, look, I did call them, but the phone number Manny Ortiz gave me is out of service, so what am I supposed to do? I don't even know where he is, now. I…I don't think they're coming back.”

Other people get kittens dumped on their doorsteps. Or babies. We get chickens.

I just stare at her. She sighs.

“I promise, I'll see about finding him a nice place in the country or something. Where he can live out the rest of his natural life.”

I nearly jump when my mother's hand slips around mine, which is when I notice the circles underneath my mother's eyes…and the worry lurking in them. Oh, Lord, Nonna's right.

“I know how much it must be killing you not to have your own place,” she says. “If I'd had to move back in with my mother at your age, I think I would have killed myself.”

Yes, I can imagine she would. If you think Nedra's something else, you should see Grandma Bernice, who now lives in Phoenix, of all places. I remember, when my grandparents still lived in the neighborhood, going to this little butcher shop over on Amsterdam Avenue she used to like. There was one time we went, I was maybe seven or eight, that she nearly had the butcher in tears, making him drag out every single chicken from behind the glass so she could inspect it. So maybe I don't have it so bad, huh?

I smile for my mother. “I'm fine, Nedra. Really.”

“Of course you are. You're my daughter.” She leans over, kisses me on the forehead, then seems to force herself to her feet. “Jesus, I'm more tired than I thought.” On a huge yawn, she adds, “Guess I'll go on to bed, since I'm about to pass out anyway. 'Night, sweetheart.”

“'Night.”

After she leaves, I find myself staring up at my paints on the closet shelf. Then bringing them down. Then opening them.

My fingers tingle.

So what could it hurt, playing around with them once in a while? You know, as a hobby? I mean, it's not as if I'd think about doing this for money or anything. And I do have a lot of time on my hands, especially since I doubt I'll ever date again.

And while this depressing thought is worming its way into my brain, my cell rings. I freeze. Is it Nick? Greg? Terrie?

Am I going to stand here and wonder all night or check the Caller ID?

It's Paula.

“Hey, you,” she says, “what's the big idea rushing off like that on the Fourth without bothering to say goodbye?”

“I'm sorry, Paula. It's just…”

“It's just that you and Nick are both idiots, that's what. Y'know, I'd knock both of your heads together, if I could get you close enough.”

I shut my eyes. “How much do you know?”

“Well, let's see. The party ends, you and Nick never come down off the roof—at least, not down here—and then, oh, an hour and a half later you go running off without even taking back your salad bowl. Which is all washed and waiting for you, by the way. So Frank and I figure you two had sex and somebody got scared. And my guess the somebody was you.”

I hesitate, then say, “It was a mistake, Paula. A rebound thing, you know.”

“Hey, don't knock rebounds. Frank was a rebound.”

“He was?”

“Sure. Don't you remember? Oh, you probably don't, we weren't that close then.”

Not that we're close now.

“Anyway,” she says, “I was going with this turkey named Joe Simeone, and we were like an inch from getting engaged. So we were at some party at his friend's house and I had to go pee, which meant I had to go down the hall to get to the bathroom, only when I passed by one of the bedroom doors, I hear this very familiar male grunting sound coming out from the other side of the closed door, a sound I had, in fact heard in my ear only the night before, if you get my drift. So I thought about bustin' in on Joe and whoever it was, only I'm a lady, you know? So I waited out in the hall until this little slut Cindy Montefiore came out, her hair this rat's nest like you wouldn't believe. And let me tell you, she looked like she was gonna mess her pants for sure. Anyway, I wasn't interested in her—where was the challenge?—so I barged in on Joe the Schmuck, who still didn't even have his pants pulled all the way up—”

Nice image.

“—only after I punched Joe's lights out, I got to crying so hard I thought I was gonna throw up. And Frank came to the rescue and took me away, and a month later I got pregnant and we got married and it's been happily ever after. Now why did I get started on that, huh? That's not why I called. I'm calling because Grandpa Sal has decided he wants a big birthday bash for his ninetieth in a couple weeks, and guess who's been elected to give it?”

And guess who sounds secretly pleased to be so honored? Sal is Nonna's brother-in-law, my grandfather's brother. One of two surviving siblings of eight, he's apparently determined to invite everyone he's ever known who's still breathing to this party of his. Which would include my grandmother.

“So you'll bring her?” Paula is saying, adding when I've apparently held my breath too long, “And I doubt Nick will be anywhere around, if that's what's worrying you. This isn't his family. Besides, it's on a Saturday afternoon.
I think he's on duty that day. And no, this isn't a trick. Trust me, I've got no energy for matchmaking.”

A less charitable person might think that's because she expends it all talking.

Against my better judgment, I say yes, after which I go next door to my grandmother's room to find her sitting up in her overstuffed chair, dozing in front of some cop show. She jerks awake when I turn off the TV, then frowns.

“Damn. I never see end of anything anymore.”

Her mood improves, however, when I tell her about the party. In fact, her whole face lights up. Funny thing is, Nedra tries to get her out at least once a week, to go out for lunch if nothing else, or do a little shopping, but she almost always declines. From her expression, however, you'd think the poor woman had been imprisoned for years and this was her first reprieve.

“A party? For Salvatore, you say?”

“Uh-huh.”

Her mouth gets all flat as she frowns again.

“What's the matter?”

“I just remember. Salvatore Petrocelli isa pain in the butt.”

I sit on the edge of the bed, hopeful. “This mean you don't want to go?”

Surprise flickers in her black eyes. “Why would you think that? Of course, I want to go. He thinks I'ma pain in the butt, too.” Then she does this…thing with her shoulders that I've never seen her do before. Almost as if she's…preening? “But only ifa you take me shopping for something new to wear? I want to look—” her eyes drift to mine, full of the devil “—
più caldo.
”

H
ot, huh?

Sure.
You
try to find clothes for a four-foot-ten, hundred-thirty-pound, hunched-over, eighty-year-old woman whose boobs are intimately acquainted with her navel. But it's been three hours since we started this shopping trip, and every time I try to steer her toward anything that looks even remotely as though it will
fit,
let alone not make me want to vomit, she bellows something in Italian and hits me with her pocketbook.

Remind me later to ask Nedra what on earth I did as a child to warrant this level of punishment.

“I have closet full of old lady clothes,” Nonna says, pouting. “Now I want to looka like Britney Spears!”

I'm not making this up, I swear.

I point out, as diplomatically as I can with a throbbing head, swollen feet and splintered nerves, that most females Britney Spears's age can't look like Brittney Spears. And that few
over
her age would want to.

She smacks me again and drags me into the next junior department, pawing at some sleazy…thing with spangles and chains. I glance over, notice the chickipoo a few feet
away holding up a dress the size of a Kleenex to her nonexistent breasts. Two other chickipoos in hip-hugger mini-skirts, midriff-baring tank tops and way too much makeup—whose combined ages would still make them younger than me—are giggling and snapping gum beside her. My grandmother looks over at their hideous platform shoes.

“Can I get something like that?”

“You have something like that,” I say, pointing to her orthopedic Oxfords.

She glances down. Nods. Continues mauling the sleeze. And I don't know why it's taken me this long, but I suddenly get what this is all about. She knows she can't wear any of this stuff. And I'll bet my butt when we walk out of here, she'll let me take her to the right department, get her something that won't make people gag. Or mistake her for a hooker who didn't know when to quit. But Nonna never had the chance to be a chickipoo. Raised in a tiny town in Italy by strict, God-fearing parents, even if stuff like this had existed then, she wouldn't have been allowed to even look at it, let alone wear it.

She's just playing, is all. And fighting me the way she never got to fight her own mother. Not my idea of fun, but hey, she's eighty. Who am I to say?

Nonna holds up a glittery tank top like the chickipoos are wearing. “What do you think of this?”

“You can't wear a bra with that, Nonna.”

“So?”

“So your nipples would hang out at the bottom.”

She glowers at her reflection in the mirror for several seconds. Then, with a sigh, she hangs up the top, looks at me. “Ima being a pain in the ass,
sì?
”

“You betcha. Come on. Let's go up to the third floor.”

As I suspected, she meekly follows—it's about damn time the old girl runs out of steam, sheesh—and within fifteen minutes, we pick out a lovely two-piece rayon challis dress in a bright, tropical print. One with which she can wear that marvel of engineering she calls a bra.

She grins at me in the dressing room mirror. “I looka hot, no?”

“Nonna, you're gonna knock 'em dead.”

“Per Dio—!”
She crosses herself, her eyes wide. “You watcha you mouth. Mosta people at this party, they already gotta one foot ina grave.”

On the way out of the department, she snags my arm, then nods in the direction of the store's beauty salon. “I think I shoulda get my hair trimmed a little, maybe.”

I nearly gasp. Nonna's hair falls to her waist, and always has. To my knowledge, no one's ever taken scissors to it. “I can do that for you, you know.”

But she shakes her head. “I have never been inna beauty salon,” she says wistfully, and again, I get it. Only this time, I catch the urgency in a way I hadn't before. That she
is
eighty years old. That whatever she hasn't done and wants to, she better damn sight do now.

“We'll see if they have any openings,” I say. “And what the heck, maybe I'll have them take a couple inches off this rat's nest, too, while we're at it.”

 

Sometime later, we're standing at the front of the only coffee shop in a ten-block radius from the store Nonna would deign to set foot in, waiting to be seated. “Let me see your mirror again,” Nonna says, her eyes bright.

With a smile, I dig in my purse for my hand mirror. Instead of having them take a couple inches off her hair, she ended up with only a couple inches
left.
And she looks absolutely adorable. Like an Italian elf. Ears and all. Who knew she'd been hiding such wonker ears under all that hair? But really, she doesn't look a day over seventy-five. And the lady in the salon insisted on plucking her brows a little, dusting her cheeks with a pale blusher. The transformation is truly amazing.

“I look almost asa sexy as you,” she says.

Oh, yeah. I had them take all my hair off, too. I still look like a poodle, but a shorn one. With this really great neck.

“Right this way,” an overly eyelashed hostess says, and we're led back to a dimly lit booth. And not a moment too soon. I slide into the booth with a huge sigh, letting my eyes drift closed as my legs slowly register that they're
not carting me around anymore. God. I've had orgasms that didn't make me feel this good.

My hand bumps something; I open one eye, see a folded up
Post
someone left on the seat. With mild interest, I pick it up, scan the article in front of me.

“So,” Nonna says, handing me back my mirror. “What are you going to wear to this party?”

“I have no idea,” I say, distracted, then I let out a gasp. “Oh, my God…” I look up. “The police caught Brice's murderer.”

 

I'm reading the newspaper article out loud to Nonna while she slowly chews her turkey club, unmindful of the blob of mayonnaise stuck to her chin. I have to shout over the restaurant din so Nana can hear me, but even so, I'm not sure how much she's actually caught.

“Your boss, he was dealing drugs?”

“Apparently so.”

So, after all that, it wasn't a former lover, or Carole, the disgruntled senior designer (just between you and me, I kinda suspected her). Or even an architect. Just some hit man with very bad karma.

I'm not sure I understand all the details, nor do I want to. What gets me, though, as I'm reading this, is the sense of satisfaction I feel for Nick. And pride. He's even quoted somewhere in here, something about thanking the community for their cooperation. You think maybe that includes me?

After that fades, however, I realize I can let the guilt go. For not feeling worse about what happened to Brice, I mean. Not that I think he deserved to die, exactly. But I'm not sure he deserved to live, either. Sorry, but drugs creep me out. And people who use them—or sell them—creep me out even more. Which is probably why I don't get asked to a lot of parties.

Except for ones where the average age of the guests is eighty-five, that is.

“You should call him,” Nonna is saying, even as she tries to work a piece of something out of her bridgework with her tongue.

“Who?”

“Nick. To congratulate him.
Per Dio—!”
She reaches inside her mouth, pokes around for a minute until she dislodges a piece of turkey large enough to make a whole new sandwich. She waves the mangled piece of turkey at me for a second, saying, “It would be nice,
sì?
”

No way am I going there.

 

The flowers are waiting for me when I get home. Red roses. Three dozen of them. Which I should find tacky, if not clichéd. Instead, my breath leaves my lungs in a long, “Ooooh…”

My mother plucks the card from the box, shoves it at me. “Maybe you should see who they're from before you wet yourself—ohmigod! Where's your hair?”

“Somewhere around 34th and Broadway.”

“And where's your grandmother? And I hope to hell you don't give me the same answer.”

I'm still ogling the roses, nestled so sweetly in their little tissue-paper lined coffin. “Talking to the doorman. She'll be up later.”

“You left her on her
own?
” Nedra flies to the door, opens it, peers out into the hall.

“For God's sake,” I say, opening the card, “she can find her way to the elevator by herself.”

My mother tromps back to me, gives me a disgusted look, presumably because I'm not.

“I take it from your expression,” I say, “that you already know who they're from.”

“So? I put back the card, didn't I?”

Of course, they're from Greg—you didn't really think this was Nick's style, did you?—but there's no note or anything. Which is strange, but also intriguing, in a bizarre kind of way.

“So the man can pull out a credit card and order a bunch of roses,” Nedra says. “Big hairy deal.”

I say nothing as I gather them up to go find a vase. Noticing I'm headed for the kitchen, Geoff trots along beside me, ever hopeful.

“You're not thinking of resurrecting that relationship, I hope.”

I pretend I can't hear her because of the water running. I'm not thinking of anything, really, except that these are very pretty roses and I had no idea I was such a sucker for clichéd romantic gestures. From down the hall, I hear my grandmother's return, followed by, “Ohmigod! What happened to
your
hair?”

My purse, lying innocently on the kitchen table, suddenly rings. Geoff, who apparently has mistaken me for Nonna, barks at me until I answer the phone.

“Ms. Petrocelli? This is Dana Alsworth from Alsworth Interiors, you interviewed with us a couple weeks ago?”

You have got to hear this Southern accent to believe it. Dallas-born and bred, Dana Alsworth married a Northerner probably thirty years ago, hauled the accent up north along with the matched Gucci luggage. I swallow down the impulse to drawl, “Yes, ma'am?” into the phone, instead opting for a simple, “Yes?”

“Well…” An airy, slightly nervous laugh flickers through the phone. “I believe you were working with Annabelle Souter before…when you were with Fanning's?”

“Yes, I was. She was one of my best—” as in, spent her husband's money like there was no tomorrow “—clients.”

“Well, honey, she brought her project to us a couple weeks ago and since then, she's chewed up and spit out all my top designers. Now she's saying she only wants to work with
you.
”

This little hum of excitement begins to purr in my veins. “Oh, gee. I'm really flattered, but…I'm working somewhere else.”

“Where?” comes the duck-on-June-bug reply. I tell her, she gives a dismissive snort, then says, “Name your price.”

I like the way this woman thinks.

“Annabelle can be a tad…particular,” I say, which gets a shrill, panicked laugh on the other end.

“Oh, Lord, sugar, if you're as talented as you are diplomatic, you're worth your weight in twenty-four-karat gold. So I repeat—you tell me what you want, and you've
got it. And by the way, Miz Petrocelli—if you can handle this woman, I've got a midtown hotel remodel comin' up that might be right up your alley.”

“Which one?”

She tells me. I start to salivate. I also know how big the Souter project is. Four-thousand-square-foot home out on the Island. Annabelle likes to “freshen up” the place every three years or so. And we're not talking a couple new throw pillows on the couch.

“I'll need my own office. And an assistant.”

“You got it.”

“And we discuss partnership in a year.”

“Well, my, my…you certainly have brass ones, don't you?”

“All the better to handle the Annabelle Souters of the world, Ms. Alsworth.”

That gets a throaty laugh. “Honey, you get this she-devil off my back, you'll be partner in six months.”

“Then you've got yourself a new designer.”

Dana's relief was palpable, right through the phone. “I'll call her right away. If you've worked with Mrs. Souter before…”

“Three times, including her husband's law offices and her daughter's Riverside Drive co-op.”

“And you still sound sane.”

My mother and Nonna wander into the kitchen. “Believe me, I've had lots of experience dealing with crazy women.”

They both glare at me.

“So…can I say Monday?”

Gee…today is Thursday. Is three days notice enough to give the store that I'm quitting? The store where, if a customer does manage to find her way back to the dreary little design studio, a half dozen designers pounce like roaches on a bread crumb. I mull this over for, oh, maybe three seconds, then say, “That will be fine.”

“Bless you, darlin'. Just be sure to come in a little early so we can fill out that boring paperwork.”

My phone is making weird sounds, a precursor to cutting off because it needs to be recharged. So I plug the
little dear in, then grab my mother and dance around the kitchen with her, Geoff barking at our heels. I'm finally getting my life back! I'm going to have money again! My own apartment again! My own bathroom! A fowl-free environment!

Except, after I'm done babbling all this for several minutes, I catch the expressions on my mother's and grandmother's faces. The “I'm trying to be happy for you because this is what you want but…” look. You know, the one guaranteed to make you feel about two inches tall?

But you know what's really weird?

I don't think I'm as happy about this as I should be, either.

 

I had to call Greg to thank him for the roses. Yes, I did, don't look at me like that. Not that it was easy. By the time I finally got up the nerve to make the call, my stomach was in a thousand knots. A fact not helped by his abrupt, “'Lo?”