Loose Screws

I feel my eyebrows try to take flight. “Already?”

“I know, it’s premature. And probably a huge waste of time, since instinct tells me—excuse me for saying this—nothin’s happened to this guy except he got cold feet. But people like Bob Munson are very good at making waves.” Nicky glances around the studio apartment, which takes maybe three seconds. “So how come, if you were gettin’ married, all your stuff’s still here?” He looks back at me, eyes narrowed. “You don’t expect me to believe your husband was gonna move into this hamster cage with you?”

I ignore the derision in Nicky’s voice. Okay, so between all my books, my plants, the full-size drafting table, the computer and all its attendant crap, the TV and stereo, a sofa bed, two chairs, my exercise bike, a coffee table, a bistro set, and five pieces of matching, packed Lands’ End luggage, things might seem, to the uneducated eye, a little cramped.

“I decided to hang on to it, in case I needed to stay over in the city from time to time. Most of my clothes are out at our new house, howev—” My jaw drops. “You mean they think I have something to do with Greg’s disappearance?”

I’m usually a little quicker on the draw. I swear.

At that, Nicky perches on the edge of my Pier One coffee table (and if you breathe a word to my clients that my apartment is done in mass-market kitsch, you’re dead meat) and looks me straight in the eye. “What I think doesn’t matter here. God knows, it wasn’t me that came up with this asinine theory. And that’s all it is, believe me. In any case—” he digs around in his coat pocket for a scrawny little notepad and a Bic pen “—nobody’s accusin’ you of anything, okay? It’s just that, well, seeing’s as he stood you up, you do have a motive. I mean, should…”

He stops.

I grip the edge of my sofa bed (Pottery Barn, cranberry velvet, three years old) and make myself focus on Nicky until there’s only one of him. “Hey. I went ballistic back there,” I say, swatting in the general direction of midtown. “That wasn’t faked. I can’t fake anything,” I add, which gets a quick hitch of the pair of eyebrows across from me. “Besides, even I know you can’t have a murder without a bo—” I burp “—dy.”

Tell me that didn’t sound as blasé as I think it did.

Nicky is looking at me as if he’s not sure. But then he says, “Nobody’s sayin’ anything about murder, Ginger. I’m just tryin’ to fit the pieces together. All anybody wants is to find this guy and get his frickin’ father off our case.”

“Well, why point a finger at me?” Sober, I can do high dudgeon with the best of ’em. However, considering the definite possibility that my speech is slurred, I’m probably not pulling it off as well as I might have hoped. Nicky’s long, dark, silky eyelashes sidetrack me for a second, then I say, “Sure…now, I have a motive. After he stands me up. I didn’t before this afternoon. I mean, come on…why would I want to do in the man who gave me my first multiple orgasm?”

I try clamping my hand over my mouth, only I miss and smack myself in the chin.

Nicky puts his pad and pen away. And in those crystalline eyes, I see…awe. Respect. A pinch of what I’m afraid to identify as challenge. And I find myself thinking, damn, there’s all this hot, sizzling testosterone in the room, and I’m feeling really sorry for myself, which is closely followed by my wondering what might have happened if he had called me, all those years ago. Only then I remember that Nicky is a cop, for one thing, and that his family is even crazier than mine—which is going some—and that I have already had all the craziness I can stand for one lifetime. Oh, and that, according to Paula, her brother-in-law apparently has a penchant for giggly, jiggly twenty-year-olds.

And that, had events unfolded as planned, I’d be—I glance at the clock over my stove—less than fifteen hours away from my initiation into the Mile High Club.

I’d been really, really looking forward to that.

Venice, too.

“So,” Nicky says, all back-to-business. “You got an alibi for after when you last saw Munson?”

I think, a task that doesn’t usually strain me this much. “I was here, alone, most of that time. Packing and stuff.”

“Anybody see you coming in or going out?”

Again, I think. Again, I draw a blank. “I don’t think so. Sorry.”

Then the thought jumps up in my face and screams, What if Greg is dead?

I look at Nicky, feel my skin go clammy. My stomach rebels. I guess I turn green or something, because with one swift move, he grabs me and pushes me into my bathroom, where I puke out the champagne into the toilet. Which seems aptly symbolic, somehow. Afterward, Nicky hands me a cup of water to rinse my mouth, a damp cloth for my face.

I sip, mop, feel a single tear track down my cheek, undoubtedly dragging mascara behind it. Silently, Nicky steers me back out into the living room. I look at all the packed luggage and heave a great, sour-tasting sigh.

“Here,” he says behind me.

I turn, take the business card imprinted with the precinct address and phone number. “Be sure to let us know if he contacts you. Otherwise, well…just…stick around, okay?”

I languidly rustle to the door in his wake, sniffing occasionally, feeling pretty much like something freshly regurgitated myself. One slightly dented, recycled single woman, vomited back into the system to start over again. Once in the hall, Nicky turns, his heavy eyebrows knotted.

“What?” I say when the silence drags on too long.

“You gonna be okay? I mean, here by yourself?” he says, and I think, Aw…how sweet, only then he adds, “Maybe you should get your mother to come spend the night or something—”

I frown.

“—or not.”

The woman is legendary. Even after more than thirty years, my father’s family, according to Paula, still talks about my mother in hushed tones.

“My wife walked out on me three years ago,” he now says. “It sucks.”

Wife? What wife? Paula never said anything about a wife.

“Why?” I ask, because I really want to know.

Still not facing me, he shrugs, like it doesn’t matter anymore. Only his jaw is clenched. “She couldn’t deal with me bein’ a cop. Said it scared her too much. We split after less than six months.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

He nods, then says, “She’s okay, though. Got married again last year. To an accountant.” He finally turns back, for a couple seconds looking at me the way a man does when he wants to touch you but knows to do so would shorten his life expectancy. Then he says, very quietly, “I should’ve called you. After Paula’s wedding, I mean.”

Then he turns and walks down the hall. I watch him for a minute, until he gets on the elevator, after which I go back into my apartment and lean against the closed door, suddenly possessed with an inexplicable urge to sing “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”

Two

“You shouldn’t trek up there by yourself,” Nedra says on the other end of the line, a scant week after my aborted nuptials. “I’m going with you.”

“Up there” is Scarsdale, where I’m about to go to pick up at least some of my clothes, as per Greg’s—who is very much alive, by the way; more on that in a minute—suggestion. Although Nedra and I have talked on the phone several times since Sunday, I haven’t yet seen her live and in person. A state of affairs that I intend to continue as long as I possibly can. Hey—I’m having enough trouble finding my own snatches of air to breathe; competing with my mother for them could be fatal. Still, for a moment, I am tempted to give in to the suggestion that I do not have the strength or enthusiasm requisite to argue. Especially since it’s my own dumb fault for telling her my plans.

Then my survival instinct saves the day with, “Over my dead body.”

This declaration, however, does not bother a woman whose idea of a hot date was being bodily dragged from the scene of a political protest. If anything, I can feel her cranking up to the challenge. I cut her off at the pass.

“This is something I have to do myself,” I say, thinking, Hmm…not bad. I pour myself a glass of orange juice, take my Pill even though I obviously don’t—and won’t—need birth control for the forseeable future. But the thought of dealing with heavy periods and cramps again, after ten years without, gives me the willies. After I swallow I say, “I’m all grown up now. Don’t need my mommy to hold my hand.”

“Did I say that? But how are you planning on lugging everything back on the train by yourself?”

So I hadn’t thought that part through. But there are times when self-preservation outweighs logic.

“I’ll manage.”

“You shouldn’t have to face That Woman alone.”

Why Nedra detests Phyllis Munson so much, I have no idea. Greg’s mother has always been gracious to mine, the few times they’ve met. But then, Phyllis is gracious to everybody. While my mother was burning bras and flags in the sixties, Greg’s mother was kissing up to pageant judges. She even made it to Atlantic City as Miss New York one year, I forget which. Something tells me she’s never gotten over not making the top ten. But my point is, I don’t think Phyllis knows how not to smile. Although you do have to wonder if all those years of just being so gosh-darn nice don’t take their toll.

In any case, things are liable to be just a bit on the tense side between Phyllis and me, since her son skipped out on our wedding and we’re both going to feel weird and not know what to say and all. Adding my mother to the mix would be like pouring hot sauce over Szechuan chicken. Besides, the last thing I need is for my mother to see how terrified I am of venturing out into the real world.