Loose Screws (10 page)

“But not in this case?”

God, I am so pathetic.

“You're fishing,” Nick says.

“After the week I've had, you better believe it.”

He chuckles. “No, Ginger, not in this case. In your case, I'd have to say on a scale of one to ten, you're maybe…an eight?”

Hey, I'll take it. Catherine Zeta Jones, I ain't.

Then he says, “So what about you? You think of sex when you look at me?”

What I'm thinking is, my goodness, it's warm out here.

“No,” I say, because I really want that to be the truth. “After what I've been through, I might not think about sex ever again.”

He raises a “yeah, right” brow but says, “So what's the problem?”

The problem is, I'm sure there's a catch here somewhere. And it's driving me nuts that I can't see it. “Gee, I don't know…I mean, I've never had a guy friend before. Not a straight one, anyway.”

“So maybe now's your golden opportunity. Look, Ginger, I don't cheat on my girlfriends—”

Which naturally leads me to wonder just how many of those there have been over the past ten years.

“—ever. I
like
you. We're
family,
for God's sake. And yeah, to answer the question lurking in that female brain of yours, I'd tell Amy if we…had that cup of coffee. Or whatever.”

Now, see, it's that
whatever
that makes me nervous, because I do not want to want
whatever.
Ever. Because I know what Nick Wojowodski's
whatever
is like…

And I need to seriously get over myself because the man has someone with whom he shares
whatever
on probably a very regular basis and what the hell is going to happen over a lousy cup of coffee in a crowded diner?

“I gotta go,” I say, fully aware that I haven't answered Nick's question.

“Sure,” he says after a moment, his hands in his pockets. “You take care, okay?”

Tell me I did the right thing.

 

Geoff makes a beeline for my couch the instant I open the door to my apartment. Defying every law of physics heretofore discovered, he hauls his legless body up onto the couch, where he collapses, panting so hard I'm afraid his lungs are going to burst. Camel-colored dog hair and dog drool on red velvet. Oh, yeah. That'll work.

Too tired and hot and frazzled to care—it's just for a few days, and I vaguely remember how to operate a vacuum cleaner—I dump my purse on the counter, notice I have a message on the machine. Tough. It can wait. Right
now, my priorities are water, rip panty hose off body, and pee, in that order.

My turning on the kitchen faucet brings Geoff off the sofa and into the kitchen like a flash. I find a plastic bowl, fill it for him, put it on the floor, grab the largest tumbler I own, fill it for me, put it to my lips. The next minute is filled with the sounds of off-sync gulping. If I get a stomach cramp from drinking too much too fast, I really don't give a damn.

Water sloshes in my stomach as I walk over and switch on the fan. After carefully aiming it toward my crotch, I hike up my skirt and divest myself of the nylon torture devices, then zip barefoot into the bathroom. Apparently my activity has prompted a similar urge in my new roommate, because he's now whining at the door.

“Forget it,” I say, shucking off my soaking-wet dress and slip. “You piddled like three hundred times between the police station and here.” (Yes, we walked. Don't ask.) I am now standing in my underwear in front of the fan, willing the sweat to evaporate. The dog, who had resumed his frantic panting, now sucks in his tongue, looks at my breasts and cocks his head, perplexed.

“Take my word for it. They're there.”

Geoff does the canine equivalent of a shrug—
Sure, honey, if you say so
—then heaves himself back up onto the sofa.

Men.

Marginally cooler than I was five minutes before, I yank on a short sundress, grab a cherry Coke from the fridge, and plop down beside the dog, deciding I need to take stock of my situation
á la
Bridget Jones.

Okay. Lost: Fiancé, one. Job, one.

Gained: Dog, one. Possible male friend, one. But only if I get brave enough to test those waters, which isn't likely. So maybe I should scratch that off the list.

Holding steady: Apartment, one. Mother, one (big sigh here). Grandmother, one. Friends who aren't speaking to each other, two. Other friends, enough. Money in bank— I get up, dig my checkbook out of my purse, go back to sofa—enough to tide me over for a month, maybe. With
whatever I get from Fanning, another month, maybe a bit more.

So, all in all, things could be worse—

I hear the neighbor's phone ring. No, wait, that's mine.

I hunt down the cordless, find it stuffed behind the sofa cushion with the remote and three Häagen-Dazs wrappers. I answer just before the machine picks up.

“Ginger, hi! It's Annie Murphy!”

Uh-oh. This is the woman I sublet the apartment from, remember? In five years, she's never called me once.

“Annie!” I say brightly. “Hi…um, did you get my last check okay?”

“What? Oh, yeah. That's not why I'm calling. I left a message on your machine, but figured I'd try again, since this is important…” Geoff plops his furry chin on my bare leg. Ick, ick, ick. I push him away, just as I hear Annie say, “God, I really hate to do this to you….”

“I
cannot believe she only gave you two weeks.”

A too large University of Michigan T-shirt flopping around his hips as he works, Ted shovels far too many sliced carrots into the sizzling wok. When I presented my little terror-stricken self at his door a half hour ago, dog in tow, Ted ushered us both inside, gave me a Dasani and Geoff a pat on the head and insisted we both stay for dinner. “What
did
she expect you to do? And she does understand that all the furniture is yours, right?”

On top of everything else, this latest blip on my radar screen has basically fried my brain. I'm too stunned to even sigh, even though it's been several hours since Annie's call. Who would've guessed that, after five years of designing costumes for movies out on the West coast, she'd get a sudden offer to oversee the wardrobe for one of the soaps taped here in New York? Since her mother had been ill for some time, Annie grabbed the opportunity to be closer to her family again. And naturally, she wanted her apartment back.

What could I say?
It's mine now, you can't have it?
This isn't like finding a ball on the playground. Or somebody
else's boyfriend. For one thing, the place is hers technically anyway, since her name's on the lease. And my staying there as long as I had was a fluke. Neither of us foresaw that six months would stretch to five years, but it did and now she's coming back and I can add homeless to jobless and loveless on my list of indignities.

I fiddle with my cute little Nokia phone, lying in front of me on the bar. I had to bring it, you know, in case Nick might call. About Brice or the dog or something. And I'd told him I'd be available. “Yes, she knows the furniture is mine. Says she can pick up a few pieces once she gets here.”

Peppers and broccoli join the sacrificed carrots. “God, that just bites.” No argument there. Ted glances over his shoulder at me. “You sure you don't want something stronger?”

I shake my head. I'm still not sure I've worked all the champagne out of my system yet.

Ted's cargo shorts ring. He hauls his cell out of one of the pockets, answers it, never missing a beat with his stirring. From the living room, I hear Alyssa giggle, Geoff yip. Maybe, if nobody claims Geoff, I can talk Ted into taking him. Of course, their twin Siamese cats—who have been sitting up on the highest shelf of the glass étagère and willing the dog to die ever since we got here—might not think that's such a hot idea.

Randall drifts into the kitchen, his cell phone glued to
his
ear, sighing a lot. Talking to his mother, I gather. Something about his younger brother Davis moving to the city, her wanting him to stay with Randall until he finds his own place. Needless to say, Mr. Still-in-the-Closet is trying to talk her out of it. My hunch is he's not winning. He plants his fine jeans-clad butt on the stool next to mine, pinching the space between his brows.

Ted finishes his conversation and comes over to the counter, setting his phone down to pick up a ceramic serving bowl. “Hey, honey—cheer up. We'll fix it, I promise.”

That brings a smile to my lips, albeit a very small one. “That's very sweet, Ted. But right now, I don't even think
I can find the pieces of my life, let alone put them back together—”

With a heavy sigh, Randall plunks down his phone on the counter. Those Nokia folks are really raking it in, boy.

“Let me guess,” Ted says, shoveling sauteed stuff into the bowl. “We're having company next week.”

“I tried to talk her out of it,” Randall says to Ted. “I really did.”

Ted carries the bowl out to the dining table at one end of the living room. “Hey, you're the one with issues about this.
I
don't have any problem with your brother staying with us. But then,
I
don't have any trouble admitting I'm gay.”

“That's because
your
mother is dead.”

Unperturbed, Ted returns to the kitchen, gently smacking Randall on the shoulder as he passes. “And telling your mother won't kill her, Rand.”

“Like hell it won't.”

Oh, goody. A distraction.

“Oh, come on,” I say, reaching over to snitch a piece of mushroom Ted somehow missed. “Shocking our parents is part of our job description.” The mushroom disappears into the great void under my rib cage. With everything I've been through, I shouldn't be hungry. Yeah, well, tell my stomach that. “Davis fulfilled his quota by being the first kid in three generations on either side to get a divorce, right? And what have you done? Diddly squat. So the way I see it, you're way overdue.”

Randall sighs. “You've got a serious screw loose, you know that?”

“Hey, I'm not the one pretending to be someone I'm not.”

I catch the glance that flutters between the two men at that, but before I can pin them on it, Alyssa and Geoff wander in to see what's holding up dinner.

“All I've got is veggies,” Ted says to the dog, then looks at me.

“Don't ask me. I have no idea what he eats.”

Ted reaches into the bag of carrots sitting on the
counter, hands one to the dog. Geoff sniffs it, slides his gaze over to me.

“That's it for the moment. We'll get you the real stuff later, okay?”

The dog sighs, then gingerly takes the carrot. He stands there for a moment, the thing dangling from his mouth like a cigar, before dejectedly hauling it over to plop down on the Berber carpet underneath the coffee table. After staring at it for a good minute, he finally, with a huge sigh, braces it between his paws and starts chewing, but his expression clearly says, “You have got some
serious
making up to do.”

“I can't believe you won't be living across the hall anymore,” Alyssa says, sidling up next to me. Her mouth is all twisted up. “That so totally sucks.”

I sling one arm around her slender waist, pull her to me. “I know. But we can still get together, you know. Wherever I live.”

She eyes me speculatively. “You mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

She wanders back out into the living room; I give the guys a what-was-that-all-about look. Ted sighs.

“Her mom's got a real bug up her butt about something recently. New boyfriend or something, never seems to have time for her own daughter. And Lyssa's at that age when she's beginning to have all these what's-going-on-in-my-body questions, and worrying about boys, and I can tell she doesn't think I could possibly know anything about boy-girl relationships.”

I smile. “Well, do you?”

“More than I'd like to, honey, believe me. But anyway, back to you, since Mr. Randall here seems to think that denial is healthy—”

“Screw you,” Randall mouths. Ted ignores him.

“—I can't do anything about the job, that's true. And God knows, I wouldn't begin to try to sort out your love life. But let's put our heads together about the apartment situation—oh, God!” He smacks his palm against his forehead. “I am so slow today! Jerzy told me Mrs. Krupcek's place will be ready to show tomorrow or Wednesday, if I
knew anyone who was interested. And I bet he could swing it so you wouldn't even have to put down a deposit.”

For a couple hundred bucks' finder's fee, our super has been known to give the head's up when one of the apartments becomes available. This suits everyone, since his little service saves the brokers the trouble of listing—

Realization dawns.

“Whoa, hold on—what happened to Mrs. Krupcek?”

Ted looks up, frowning. “You didn't hear? She died. A week ago, something like that.”

Tears pop out of my eyes. “She
died?
Mrs. Krupcek
died?
”

This is far too many dead people in one day.

“She was ninety-eight, honey,” Ted says gently. “She went in her sleep.”

“Ninety-eight?”

“Yep. And healthy as a damn horse up until the very end.”

“Oh.” I let out a shuddering sigh. Well, that's not so bad. Besides, I don't think I exchanged ten words with the woman since I moved in, so it's not as if this is a personal loss. But still. “Who…who found her?”

“Her granddaughter. When she came to check on her that morning. Anyway, it's a one-bedroom, which would be nice, but since it's in the back, it probably won't cost you any more than what you're paying now. So you should go ask Jerzy. Tonight, preferably. Okay, let's eat.”

See? Without even trying, things were beginning to get back to normal.

 

“Did you just say three
thousand
a month?”

“And it is steal at that, you should grab it, I already have five other people asking me about it.” Jerzy grins, showing me his gold tooth. I have no idea how old this man is. Forty? Sixty? Hard to tell with the dyed hair. “But I give you first crack because I like you.”

I ignore that. Jerzy leers at anything with boobs. Or reasonable facsimiles thereof.

“Let me get this straight—you're telling me three thou
sand bucks a month for an apartment that gets approximately five minutes of sunlight a day?”

“Hey, you want sunlight, move to New Mexico.”

Everybody's a smartass, sheesh.

“Two thousand,” I say.

He laughs.

I bite my lip. I have no job. I have no idea if, when, or where I'll find one. But I've looked at the ads—got a paper when I went to the store to buy five different kinds of dog food in the hopes that Geoff would eat at least one of them—and I know what rentals are like. I also know there are plenty of idiots who'd sell their souls to the devil for the privilege of having a bedroom door.

“Twenty-five hundred.”

“Miss Petrocelli, please do not embarrass yourself like this. I do not set the rents. I only pass along information I am given by manager. T'ree t'ousand, take it or leave it. Although, for you, because you are so nice—” another gold-plated leer “—I reduce my fee from t'ree hundred to two seventy-five.”

“It's too dark, anyway,” I say, and walk away.

Geoff is waiting for me when I get back to the apartment, ears pricked hopefully. I toss my keys onto the counter and sink onto the sofa beside him. “I didn't get it,” I say, and he lays his chin on my knee with a little whine of sympathy.

This is going to be tricky. I have two weeks to find both a job and an apartment. And without a job, it's going to be damn tricky to land an apartment. But I am a plucky little thing, if I do say so myself, and I'm not going down without a fight.

So I call Terrie, figuring I'd fill her in on the events of my day as quickly as possible, since God knows I do not wish to rehash them any more than necessary. Only I no sooner get started than she goes, “You know, just once it might be nice if you ask how somebody else is doing before you go layin' your whole sorry life on a person's head, you know?”

Then she hangs up.

And that really freaks me out, because she's never done
anything like that before. I almost call her back, except I realize I am on serious crisis overload right now and am in no fit shape to help anybody deal with theirs.

So then I call Shelby, only Mark answers and says, in what sounds like a tight voice only I can't quite tell because one of the kids is screaming in the background, that she's gone for a walk—at 8:00 p.m.—as if that's a perfectly normal thing for Shelby to do. He'll have her call me back, he says, clearly not interested in my plight—even though I haven't had a chance to tell him I
have
a plight—then
he
hangs up.

Then Terrie calls back, all apologetic, saying she had a really awful day at work (she's a financial adviser and when you hear the headline, “Stocks fell today in the aftermath of…” you would do well to give her a wide berth) and she's still all messed up about what happened between her and Shelby, but if I feel like talking, she's there. Now, my options are, saying, no, no, it's okay, we can talk another time, or taking advantage of her feeling guilty for blowing me off before.

I am so bad. But I am also sure she will provide me with ample opportunity to make it up to her in the future.

I cut to the chase.

“Brice was found murdered this morning in front of the offices so I don't have a job and Annie's moving back to New York so I have to be out of the apartment in two weeks, and I think Nick's trying to hit on me only he has a girlfriend and I don't really want to get involved with anybody else, not right now anyway, and especially not Nick.”

I swear I had
no
idea that last part was even lurking in my brain, let alone poised to fly out of my mouth. Good God.

“Nick? Nick who?”

“Wojowodski. You know, from my cousin Paula's wedding?”

“
Broom
closet Nick?”

“Yep.”

After a lengthy pause Terrie says, “Kinda took him a while to get around to calling you, didn't it?”

So I bring her up to date.

“Oh,” she says, only then there's another really long pause. Then I hear, “You know what really burns my butt? Here I'm thinking I'm fully and completely justified in feeling like shit, but then you come along and shoot that notion all to hell.” She sighs. “Jesus have mercy, girl—what else can happen to you?”

“Oh, I forgot. I got a dog.”

I hear her laugh. It's not a joyful sound, though. “And how did you manage that?”

So I tell her, ending with, “And I've always been a sucker for brown eyes.”

“Uh-huh. And what color are Nick's eyes?”

Didja notice which item on my list she honed right in on?

“Blue.”

“Well, I suppose that's something.”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately, I've always been a sucker for blue eyes, too.”

I hear a loud sigh, then a scraping sound, like a chair being dragged across the floor or something. “Okay, let's take this one item at a time. So, since we're on the Nick subject, we'll start there. Now you say he was hitting on you?”