Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  Takes me a minute. Then I let out a flummoxed, “You have got to be kidding.”

  He does the male equivalent of a pout. You know, that thing they do when they find out you really do have a headache? “I just thought…you know.”

  My head flops back on the pillow. “What is it with men and their ridiculous competitive streak? It’s not about giving me a double orgasm, okay? It’s not even about giving me one—”

  “You want me to take that one back?”

  I’d smack him, but the blood hasn’t reached that far yet.

  “It’s about,” I say, ignoring him, “being close. Caring.”

  Which is when I make my fatal mistake, apparently, because now he’s braced himself over me again and we’re doing that eye-connecting thing, and I think, Uh-oh. Because, yup, there they are. Kids and minivans and a house in Brooklyn.

  “I can do close,” he says.

  And there’s not a single shred of a glint in his eye.

  I’ll say one thing about me: when remorse hits, it doesn’t pussyfoot around. I shove Nick off me and bound off the bed, scouring the room for my clothes. I hear Nick call out as I shoot into the bathroom, lock the door behind me. God, my hands are shaking so hard, I can barely turn the water on in the sink. I should take a shower, I know that, but somehow that seems too intimate, too comfortable. Would take too long. And I have to go find my underpants.

  Jeans on, Nick’s in the kitchen when I come out. “Here.”

  My panties come sailing across the room. I fumble for them, not sure whether or not to excuse myself to put them on. And how dumb is that?

  “Thanks,” I mutter.

  “I’ll take you home,” he says, his voice low, strained. But he’s not looking at me.

  “No,” I say, slipping on the panties as quickly and discreetly as possible. “I’ll take the train—”

  “Like hell, Ginger! No way am I letting you ride the subway at this hour.”

  “Get over yourself, Nick. I’ve been riding the subway alone since I was thirteen. At night since I was seventeen. I know how to take care of myself.”

  “Yeah, you sure do, don’t you?”

  The ice in his voice stops me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Forget it.”

  “No. No, I want to know what you meant by that.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t want to know what anybody thinks. Not unless it happens to coincide with whatever you’ve already decided, the way you’ve already mapped out your life. Jesus, Ginger—why do you fight everything so much?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Yeah, you do. You got a real problem with just letting go and enjoying the moment, don’t you? Have you ever been able to just see where things lead without trying to force them to go the way you think they should go?”

  You know, this would be so much easier if the sex had been bad. Or even forgettable. But noooo, it had to be Grade AAA Superior, didn’t it? God, I’m still tingling. I can still, with very little effort, feel him inside me. And God help me, I want him there again. But not like this. Not like…

  “Nick, please—this is so not fair to you. We both just broke up with people, we’re not ready for…anything. I don’t know what planet I was on, letting myself do this. I mean…”

  Great. Can’t even finish my damn sentence.

  Nick gives me one of those stoic looks men are so good at, then goes over to his sink, rinses out some glass that had been sitting there. This should be my cue to leave, but when I open my mouth to say as much, his voice fills the void between us.

  “You know, I remember my mother tellin’ me something that’s always stuck with me. That sometimes, while we’re so busy knockin’ ourselves out tryin’ to get something we think we want, we end up missing out on something better. And that whenever it seems like what we wanted so badly slips outta our grasp, maybe it’s because somebody’s tryin’ to tell us something. And that’s the problem with what just happened, isn’t it? What just happened tonight didn’t fit in with your plans.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you if I hadn’t wanted to.”

  “Then why are you runnin’ scared, Ginger? Have I said anything to make you think I’ve changed the game plan?”

  “N-no.”

  “That’s right. I haven’t. I haven’t done or said a goddamn thing to threaten you or make you feel backed into a corner.” He crosses his arms over his chest. His voice is calm, his posture casual, but tension and anger radiate from him in hot, brutal waves. “What? The sex didn’t live up to your expectations?”

  “Oh, God, Nick, no…the sex was great—”

  “Then what’s the problem, dammit?”

  I remember the look in his eyes, hug myself. “It’s…complicated.”

  He lets out a harsh sigh. “Yeah, I’ll just bet it is. Jesus. If I live to be a hundred and forty, I’ll never understand why women have to make things so damn complicated all the time.”

  Confusion makes me lash back. “At least that’s better than a kill or score mentality that makes men think all of life’s problems can be solved with either sports, violence or sex!”

  He almost smiles. “This from the woman on the other end of that I’ll-use-you-if-you-use-me conversation. Or is my memory playin’ tricks on me?”

  Tears bite at my eyes. “No, Nick. Your memory’s not playing tricks.”

  “Well, that’s a load off my mind. So tell me, Ginger, why is everything suddenly so complicated?”

  God, I feel like a dork. A stupid, brainless, selfish dork. “I can’t explain it. Okay? I’m sorry, I can’t. Dammit, Nick—stop looking at me like that!”

  “Like what? Like maybe I give a shit and that’s messing with your head too much?”

  Inside my chest, my heart feels as though it’s going to explode.

  “I can’t do this,” I say, and practically fly from the apartment.

  And right now you’re probably thinking, is this woman nuts or what? I mean, you must be, because God knows I am. Yeah, I suppose I could just go ahead and have an affair with him, isn’t that what the hip single woman does these days? Sex for sex’s sake? Well, I can’t. I mean, I could, but I can’t. Not with Nick. He wants more, I know that, but…Nick and me would never work.

  He scares me, okay? Not because I think he’d ever hurt me, it’s not that, it’s…it’s not just that Nick Wojowodski views life in an uncomplicated way, it’s that he’s uncomplicated. Everything’s right there on the surface, solid and predictable and readable. Me? Pfuh. Thirty-one years old, and basically little more than an amorphous mass of estrogen-riddled protoplasm.

  I’ve reached this cheerful conclusion just about the time I get back to my mother’s apartment. It’s nearly 1:00 a.m. I let myself in with the set of keys I still have, slipping off my sandals, then avoiding the creaky floorboards as I tiptoe down the hall to the kitchen to get a drink of water after the long train ride. As I pass the living room, however, I feel…a presence. As if someone or something’s watching me.

  My heart leaps into my throat, effectively trapping the scream roaring up right behind it. I turn, willing myself to distinguish between the shadows in the living room, but there’s so much crap piled in the room I can’t.

  Then I hear it. A rustling sound, so faint I almost miss it.

  Oh, God. I so do not need this right now.

  It’s finally happened. After twenty-five years of my mother’s staunch refusal to install a gate over the fire escape window in the living room, somebody’s broken in and is now lurking in the shadows, waiting to bludgeon me to death for having come upon him. Or her. But maybe if I can just…sidle over to the light switch, right…there…

  After a few fumbles, my hand finds the switch on the wall behind me. This is totally insane, what I’m about to do. But it’s him or me, and maybe my life is worth squat right now, but it’s the only one I’ve got and I can’t bear the thought of leaving it in this much of a mess.

&
nbsp; I flip the switch and shriek my brains out.

  Twelve

  My mother comes flying out of her room in a T-shirt and underpants, feet pounding, bosoms bouncing. My grandmother, bless her, sleeps like the dead.

  “Ginger! For God’s sake, what on earth—”

  I turn on my mother, hardly able to get the words past my gritted teeth. “What…the…hell…is…that doing here?”

  My arm swings out toward the rooster locked in his wire cage. The bird jerks his head to one side, impaling me with his beady little gaze, before letting out an ugly, offended squawk.

  “The Ortizes couldn’t keep it where they were,” my mother calmly says. “They remembered I’d said to call me if they needed help, so they called.” She ends her sentence with a shrug, as if that’s all the explanation necessary.

  All I can do is stare at her. “And somehow that translates to giving sanctuary to a chicken?”

  “Only for a few days. Until they find another place, maybe with another relative.”

  “And they didn’t think to call Animal Control? No, wait, you didn’t think of calling Animal Control?”

  “I couldn’t do that! They would have destroyed Rocky.”

  “Rocky?”

  “Chicken Run is their little boy’s favorite movie.”

  “Nedra. Listen to me. It’s against the law to keep livestock in Manhattan. Has been for probably, oh, for a hundred years, give or take.”

  “Honestly, Ginger.” She crosses her arms, indignant. “You’re acting as though I brought home a cow or something.”

  Now do you see what I’ve had to put up with all these years?

  “Jesus, Nedra—what are the neighbors going to say?”

  “They won’t know—will they?—unless somebody with a big mouth tells them.”

  “The rooster will tell them, for God’s sake!”

  Presumably because my turning on the light has thoroughly disrupted his biorhythms, Rocky picks that precise moment to demonstrate his crowing technique, stretching up en pointe and beating his wings against the sides of the cage. A feather flies out, drifts to the carpet. I don’t even want to think about the various…things that might live in that feather.

  “Look at that,” Nedra says. “You’re upsetting him.”

  “I’m upsetting him—?”

  “And for someone who just had sex, you’re sure cranky.”

  If my mouth hadn’t already been open, it would have dropped to my chest. Since I’m a rotten liar, there’s little point in denying it, although God knows how she knows. Some kind of latent motherly radar or something, I suppose. In any case, the best I can do is shoot back, “Yeah, well, at least one of us did,” before turning smartly on my bare heel and tromping off to my room.

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” she says behind me. But by the time I recover enough to turn back around, she’s gone.

  The rooster, unfortunately, is not.

  If there’d been any way of avoiding the kitchen the next morning, believe me, I would have. But after less than five hours’ sleep—rudely interrupted by enthusiastic crowing—setting foot outside the apartment without a major caffeine injection would have been foolhardy, if not downright dangerous to the general public. So here I am in the kitchen—feeling reasonably pulled together in a crisp white sleeveless blouse and a long, straight black skirt with a slit up the front—trying to ignore the rooster perched on the back of my chair, Nonna chattering in what I can only surmise is Italian baby talk to the rooster perched on the back of my chair, and my mother sitting at the table next to the rooster perched on the back of my chair, nonchalantly sipping coffee and reading the Times.

  Criminy. The woman is downright glowing. Which I might be, too, if I weren’t so screwed up.

  No. No. I am not going to think about me. Nick. Us.

  So I’ll think about my mother. Which isn’t actually making me any more comfortable. To be perfectly honest, the idea of my mother getting it on is almost weirder than having a rooster perched on the back of my chair.

  I grab a piece of toast, ignoring Nonna’s entreaties to sit down (like I’m going to let this thing peck at my hair) eat a real breakfast, I’m too skinny, and contemplate the fifty-year-old woman sitting in front of me. There she sits, in a shapeless, sleeveless patterned dress, her hair boisterously free around her shoulders, her brows pinched in concentration, and I’m thinking, God, she’s beautiful. And it’s not as if I’m repulsed by the idea of her having sex, don’t get me wrong. More power to her. Frankly, I think she should have been hitting the sheets years ago, if you ask me. It’s just…she hasn’t. Not once since Dad died that I know of. And of course, part of me wants to grill her: is this an ongoing thing? Do I know the man? Is this serious?

  Is she really as happy as she looks?

  I sneak another peek at her face through the rooster’s tail to check.

  Hell, my guess is that she’s delirious.

  And this is bothering me because…?

  My cell rings. I sprint down the hall to my bedroom to discover Nonna has already made my bed. When did she do that? I pick up the phone before it hits me. Oh, God, what if this is Nick? What am I supposed to say?

  What am I, thirteen?

  “Hello?” I say cautiously, hoping to distract myself by trying to figure out where the hell Nonna put my black T-straps.

  “Ginger? Hi, it’s Curtiss James. Geoffrey’s new daddy?”

  “Oh—” Aha. There they are. In the closet, of all places. “Hi,” I say, relieved and not at the same time. That it’s not Nick, I mean. Figure that one out. Anyway, so here I am, trying to hang on to the phone and hook the strap on my right shoe with one hand. “How are you?”

  “Well, I’m fine. But…we have a problem. It seem Liam’s allergic to dog hair, which we didn’t know until I brought Geoff home. I mean, we thought it was something else at first—we really wanted it to be something else, because Liam absolutely adores this dog—and then he had to go away for a few days on a shoot, but then when he came back, boom! His eyes are so red, he looks like a child of the devil. Not even antihistamines work, before you ask—”

  I wasn’t going to.

  “—so the long and the short of it is, we can’t keep the dog. So we were wondering—hoping, actually—that we could return him to you?”

  I momentarily freeze. Then a little shudder of joy ripples right down my spine. After all these weeks of things being taken away from me, you mean I’m actually going to get something back?

  “Of course you can! Oh, God…I mean, I’m really sorry it didn’t work out for you, but I’d love to have him! When can you bring him? Oh, wait—I’m not where I was—long story—and I had to move back in with my mother, so let me give you that address.”

  “Hold on…Liam, honey? Can you toss me that pen? Thanks, you’re a doll.” Then to me, “God. You’re back with your mother?”

  “And you don’t even know her.”

  “I know mine, and that’s bad enough. Okay, shoot.”

  I give him the address, he says he’ll bring the dog by around seven, and we hang up. Only then do I realize I didn’t even bother asking my mother if it was okay for me to bring back the dog.

  Excuse me? There’s a rooster strutting down the hall— I can hear it’s little chicken toenails scraping the bare floor, yech—and I’m worried about bringing in a dog?

  Oh, crap. What if the dog eats the rooster?

  Then again, what if the dog eats the rooster?

  Oh, well. Them’s the breaks.

  The kitchen, later that evening. Geoff has wedged himself in backward between the refrigerator and the cabinet, alternately whimpering and snapping at the rooster, who, with much wing-flapping and ballyhoo, is doing the poultry equivalent of break dancing in the middle of the kitchen floor. While my mother and I argue over the best way to catch the stupid bird and get him back in his cage, Nonna, armed with a broom and emitting a constant stream of frantic Italian, is trying to keep the bird from pecking
the dog’s eyes out.

  Now, I’m not a total idiot. I’d told my mother about Geoff, she was cool with it—what else?—so we’d put the rooster in his cage when Curtiss dropped off the dog and all his stuff, including the never-ending bag of dog food (which actually, is finally down to about a third). Anyway, we were in the midst of giving Geoff the grand tour of his new home when, in a blur of feathers and agitated clucking, Rocky burst into the kitchen and attacked the poor dog. Who knew the damn thing knew how to undo the latch to the cage?

  “Wait!” I say, blinded by a flash of sudden inspiration. “My laundry basket!”

  I dash to my room, dumping my dirty clothes in a trail along the floor as I sprint back to the kitchen. By now, Rocky is strutting back and forth in front of the dog, apparently satisfied just to torment him with his presence. Geoff seems more pissed than anything else, curling back his lip and issuing the occasional growl, although he keeps shooting me “Would you please get this damn thing outta here” looks. My grandmother sees the laundry basket, which I’m now holding upside down in preparation for the Big Pounce, tosses the bird what looks like a crouton. (Seems a waste of a perfectly good crouton to me, but desperate times call for desperate measures.) Anyway, the chicken goes for the crouton, I go for the chicken. The basket neatly dropped down over it, I then yell to anybody who’ll listen to get the cage.

  The bird now securely ensconced in his cage, which has been removed to my mother’s room—“You brought him here, you can keep him with you,” I said, and she didn’t argue—the poor dog allows Nonna to entice him from his hidey-hole with scraps of the roast beef we had for dinner.

  “Hey. He’s only supposed to eat his own food,” I say, pointing to the rolled-up bag lolling against the leg of the kitchen table. Nonna eyes it, hands Geoff another piece of beef. As much as she seemed taken with the rooster, I can tell fur wins over feathers, no contest. Especially as the furred thing has a brain.

  “Why such a big bag? Is too much food for such a small dog, no?”

  “Don’t ask me, ask Brice.” I wince. “Well, you could have asked Brice if he were, you know, alive.”