Loose Screws (26 page)

“Oh! Uh…Greg? Um, hi, it's me.”

Stunning example of grace under pressure, don't you think?

“Ginger?” A pause. “I'm sorry, honey, I didn't recognize the number on my Caller ID, and I've been getting so damn many solicitors recently…”

“What? Oh, right. It's the home phone. My mother's home phone, I mean, since I don't have one. I had to recharge my cell, so I had to use this one, so that's why the number's not right—”

Jeez. Sound like an idiot, why don't you?

“Anyway. I called to thank you for the flowers. They're really gorgeous.”

I swear, I do not know how this happened, but…well, within half a minute, we fall right back into the easy camaraderie we used to enjoy, filling each other in on our lives—well, my filling him in on mine, anyway—which in turn leads to my telling him about my new job, which somehow leads to his offering to take me to dinner to celebrate.

And I'm sitting here on my bed, dog head in lap, rooster
making very strange noises down the hall, thinking, mmm, no, I really shouldn't. A nice phone conversation is one thing. But an actual date?

“Oh, I don't know, Greg…”

“It's just dinner, honey.”

“I know, I know, but…” I sigh. “I don't want you to think this means…anything, okay? I mean, I was going to call you before the flowers came, because…I really need to give you back the ring.”

Then I wince, waiting.

“You don't have to do that,” he says, his voice a little tight around the edges.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, I don't mean that the way it sounds. It's just, um…” He clears his throat. “Look…even if…things should work out that we get back together—I'm not pushing, I swear, just saying
if,
okay?—under the circumstances, I don't think we'd want to use the same ring, would we? So what I'm saying is—”

Notice how he just zipped right through before I had a chance to say anything?

“—I don't expect you to wear that ring again, in any case. But I sure as hell don't want it back. Do whatever you want with it. Sell it. Bury it. Leave it to charity, I don't care.”

I think I just lost my voice.

“Look, Ginge—I know you spent a lot of money on the wedding, too. Maybe this will make up for it?”

Damn, he's making it hard to remain objective.

“Wow. I'm not sure what to say.”

“That you'll go out to dinner with me?”

After a moment I say, “You play dirty, Munson.”

He chuckles. “So I've been told.” Then, more seriously, “I know I've got a lot of making up to do. And that, in the end, you might still tell me to go to hell. I'd certainly deserve it, God knows. But, on the other hand, how can I prove you can trust me if we don't spend some time together?”

Okay, conflict time. On the one hand, I'm thinking, oh, why not? Especially since he's the only person who
seems to understand why I'm thrilled about this job. And it's just dinner, for crying out loud.

But am I ready for this? To take a second chance on somebody who shredded my heart? I want to believe him. I really do. But now I'm gun-shy and I'm not sure I can.

But, oh dear God, I want to.

Jeez. Now I know how Terrie feels.

In Greg's and my case, however, there's all this past stuff I can't just summarily dismiss. I mean, Greg's and my relationship was a no-brainer. At least, it was before. Look, you know how, when you're with most guys, you end up exhausted by the end of the evening, just trying to figure out where you stand, what they want, what they're thinking? That if you accidentally brush up against them when you're walking, they'll take it as a come-on? Or…or if you suggest doing something that could even remotely be construed as In The Future, they get this look on their face like somebody just told them their genitals were going to self-destruct within the next twenty seconds? But, somehow, it was never like that with Greg.

Being with Greg was easy. Comfortable. I knew, almost from the first time we met, that I could count on him to be, well, just Greg. I never had the feeling he was trying on different personae, the way most men do, trying to be what he thought he should be, or what he thought I wanted him to be…and God, that was nice. And maybe that doesn't sound like much, but to me, it was heaven. Greg understood me, understood what I needed.

Who I needed to be.

Unlike being with somebody like, say, Nick, who keeps me on edge all the time. Demanding things of me I can't even identify, let alone
do.

Demand
ed,
I should say. Past tense.

“You're thinking too hard,” Greg says, a smile in his voice.

And he's right. I am.

It's just dinner.

“Monday after work?” I say, and I can hear his exhaled breath on the other end of the line.

 

Do you know how long it takes to ride the subway from 116th Street and Broadway all the way to Brooklyn?

“So,” Nonna bellows, “you're really going to go out with that Greg again?”

Does that answer the question?

We're standing on the platform at 14th Street, waiting for the L train. Last leg of the journey. I'm very aware that the air, such as it is, is teeming with billions and billions of sloughed-off dead skin cells. “You know, you look absolutely adorable in this,” I say, plucking at the sleeve of her new dress.

“Don' change the subject. Why you do this? Why you setta yourself up for heartbreak again, eh?”

I lean down, trying to direct my whisper right into her ear, taking care not to hook my lip on a rhinestone clip-on earring the size of a hubcap. “I'm not setting myself up for anything. Except dinner.”

Her mouth twists, disgusted. A garbled message blasts through the station. Years of practice enable me to decipher it.

“Damn. Ten minutes before the next train comes. Come on—let's go sit down.”

I hustle her over to a nearby bench; we just manage to squeeze our butts into the last two spaces, hugging our purses to our stomachs.

“
Sei pazza!”
she mutters.

I sigh. Yes, I probably am crazy. I also know this isn't going to go away simply because I don't want to talk about it, so, despite an audience of roughly a thousand people, I decide to explain what Greg and I had—maybe still have—ending with, “He made me feel safe, Nonna. What's so bad about that?”

“Safe?
Pah.
You want safe, get a Saint Bernard.” She squints at me. “You wanna man who will excite you, getta you juices going.”

I blush. “Not to worry. Greg gets my juices going just fine.”

She bats the air between us. “I notta talk about
that.
” She leans over, then whispers, only not, “Anything witha
hand and mouth can get
those
juices going. Summa day, maybe I tell you about me and Graziella Zambini, righta before the war.”

Along with at least a dozen other people, I stare at my grandmother for several seconds, then shake my head and say, “I'm not looking for exciting, okay?
Exciting
wears me out. Hey, what are you doing?”

She's grabbed my shoulder bag, digging around in it for the romance novel she knows is inside. She yanks it out, lifts a brow at the cover, then wags it in my face. “You don' want exciting? Then why you read thisa stuff?”

“For escape, Nonna.” I pluck the well-thumbed book from her hands, stuff it back inside my bag. “Besides, that's fantasy. Not reality.”

She shrugs. “You show me a woman who doesn't wanna be swept off her feet, I show you a dead woman.”

I can feel the African-American lady beside me shaking with silent laughter.

Mercifully, the train comes screeching into the station.

 

I swear, Paula looks twice as pregnant as she did the last time I saw her, which was, what, a couple weeks ago?

The house reeks of tomato sauce and garlic, booze and cigars, Paula's perfume. “It's twins,” she says with a laugh, following my eyes to her middle. “Boys, no less. Aiyiyi, am I gonna have my hands full or what? And oh, my, don't you look pretty as a picture, Aunt Renata? Come here and let me give you a hug, sweetie!”

Okay, if somebody tells me
this
woman is just putting up a front, that she's not as happy as she genuinely seems, I'm going to shoot myself.

“Your mother didn't come?” my cousin asks me, her plucked brows dipped.

“Said she wasn't feeling well. Upset tummy or something.”

“Oh, dear…nothing serious, I hope?”

I shake my head, although this is the second time my never-sick mother hasn't been well in less than a month. If she's not all right when we get back, I swear, I'm going to get her to go for a checkup if I have to dump her into the grocery cart and wheel her there.

The house is positively abuzz with voices and laughter and Frank Sinatra. A caravan of dark-haired kids streaks past, shrieking and giggling. I peek into the kitchen as Paula leads us back to the family room where the main party is, see a half-dozen loud, bosomy women I only vaguely recognize doing whatever it is domesticated women do in kitchens. Chopping and stirring and what-not.

“Okay, ladies, you're on your own,” Paula says, still smiling. “Food's in the dining room, just introduce yourselves.”

Paula's Colonial Revival family room has been invaded by a tribe of Italian gnomes, several of whom look a little stoned, frankly, although the affliction is more likely rampant deafness. My great-uncle Sal, however, apparently had a double dose of uppers with his All-Bran this morning.

“Renata!” His grin is eerily reminiscent of Kermit the Frog's. But with teeth. Lots and lots of teeth. Which I suppose compensate somewhat for the five strands of gray hair stretching across his bald pate. His arms look too long for his frail-looking, shapeless body; if it weren't for his suspenders, no way would he be able to keep up those rust-and-vomit green-plaid polyester pants. “Comma here and give your brother-in-law a bigga hug.”

They kind of lurch toward each other across beige sculpted wall-to-wall, arms precariously spread, Sal's white patent-leather loafers glittering in the sunlight slanting through the patio doors leading out to the backyard. Two feet before they actually dock, Nonna says, “You toucha my butt, you loosa you teeth.”

Sal does this asthmatic braying sound that passes for laughter, “Heh…heh…heh. I loosa them already, t'irty-t'ree years ago. So too late.”

They embrace carefully, so bones won't shatter. Although they still manage to knock both their glasses askew. They part just as gingerly, fussing at each other.

Wow. It's been ten years, at least, since these two have seen each other. Paula's wedding. That Nonna hasn't given any indication that she's missed her old neighborhood, not in all the time I've known her, seems odd. Then I look at
her eyes as they sweep the crowd, the way they light up as this one or that grasps her hands or hugs her, and I realize, ohmigod, she
has
missed them.

So why didn't she ever say anything? Nedra or I would have been happy to bring her out for visits once in a while—

“Paula definitely gives a wild party, doesn't she?”

I swing around so hard, I nearly knock myself over. Nick's hand shoots out, catching me by the elbow. My nipples immediately tingle.

Damn.

He looks at my head. Nods. “Looks good.”

“Thanks.” Then I frown. “I thought you were supposed to be at work.”

He shrugs, leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his knit shirt. Black this time, tucked into soft, black jeans. “Decided to take a few days off. After the case was solved, you know?”

“Congratulations on that, by the way. Saw it in the paper.”

His eyes are positively hooked to mine. “Thanks.”

“I, uh, take it there was no problem with, um, the dog food?”

His expression doesn't change. “It never came up.”

I nod.

“So,” he says, “how's it goin'?”

“Oh. Good, actually. Got a new job, one I think I'll actually like.”

“Hey, that's great. And…whatshisname?”

“Greg?”

“Yeah. Greg. You kick him out on his ass?”

I could lie. I should, probably. “Not exactly.”

Nick doesn't seem surprised. In fact, he doesn't seem much of anything. “So you gonna get back together with him.”

“How do you go from ‘not exactly kicking him out' to ‘getting back together'?”

He looks away, shaking his head, his mouth pulled up in a half smile. One of those man looks, you know? Then he leans close, whispers in my ear, “You jump outta my
bed like you found fleas in it, then I see this guy in your apartment, looking like his dog just died. Then I see how you look, and believe me, it doesn't take a genius to put the pieces together.”

I lick my lips, trying to ignore my pounding heart. See, this is just what I was talking about, the way guys like Nick always put you on the defensive, somehow. You can't just
be
with them, you're always having to justify yourself.

“We went together for nearly a year, Nick.” Now I look away, watching my grandmother toddle around the room, having the time of her life. I look back at Nick. “I have to give it a chance. Give
him
a chance. That's just me.”

“You love this guy?”

“I did.”

His brows lift.
“Did?”

“Hey, he hurt me. I'm not denying that. And frankly, I'm not sure what I feel for him. About him. But I just can't…walk away, okay?”

Those cool blue eyes keep mine snagged for several more seconds, then he does exactly that.

Damn.

 

These old people sure know how to party, boy. Two hours later they're still going strong, boogeying their skinny little butts off to Big Band music and stuffing their faces with a whole bunch of things they probably shouldn't, and laughing. Oh, my, the laughter. Oh, yeah, there are the occasional spats to break up—somebody remembering some infraction or other that happened forty years ago, stuff like that—but for the most part, they're having a blast.