Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  KAREN TEMPLETON

  spent her twentysomething years in New York City, which provided some of the fodder for Ginger’s experiences in Loose Screws. Before that, she grew up in Baltimore, then attended North Carolina School of the Arts as a theater major. The RITA® Award-nominated author of more than ten novels, she now lives with her husband, a pair of eccentric cats and four of their five sons in Albuquerque, where she spends an inordinate amount of time picking up stray socks and mourning the loss of long, aimless walks in the rain. Visit her Web site at www.karentempleton.com.

  Loose Screws

  Karen Templeton

  This book is dedicated to all the crazy, courageous, unsinkable, wonderful people who live in a city that still feels like home even after many years away

  and to a certain lovely, pushy editor who insisted I had this book in me.

  Thanks, Gail.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  One

  First off, let me just state for the record that I didn’t fall for Greg Munson because he was successful, or handsome—even though I sure didn’t mind the dirty how-did-you-get-him? glances whenever we went out—or even to piss my mother off. I swear, his being the son of a Republican congressman was pure serendipity.

  No. I fell in love with the guy because he gave me every indication that he was normal. And, since the odds of finding such a creature in this town are roughly a quadrillion to one, when he proposed, I pounced. I may not be proud of that, but hey. We’re talking survival of the species here.

  And I have no doubt we might have had a very nice life together if he’d bothered to show up for the wedding.

  Now, granted, it’s only been four hours since I smushed twenty-five yards of tulle into a taxi and hauled my sorry self back to my apartment from the hotel, so it’s not as if I’ve had a lot of time to figure any of this out. Not that I expect to.

  For one thing, I’m not some infantile twit blinded by infatuation, a condition to which I’ve never been prone in any case. I’m thirty-one, have lived my entire life in Manhattan and endured a childhood that, trust me, taught me early on how to spot a jerk. Greg and I didn’t even date until a good two months after I first schlepped carpet and wallpaper samples up to his new Scarsdale house, didn’t sleep together for another couple months after that. I was careful. I didn’t cling. Never brought up marriage. Never demanded any more of his time than he was willing to give. If anything, he was one who seemed hot to take things to The Final Plateau.

  So, nope. No clues there. Not even a crumb.

  We held up the ceremony as long as we could. But I knew it was all over when, like a pair of priests being called to give last rites, my mother and grandmother appeared in the hallway outside the hotel ballroom to hold vigil with me and my two bridesmaids: my cousin Shelby (Jewish, terminally married, bubbly) and best friend Terrie (black, twice divorced, cynical). Yet, ever optimistic, I persisted in covering Greg’s butt. Not to mention my own.

  “Traffic on the parkway must be horrendous this time of day,” I said brightly, ten minutes past the point where the pair of ice swans, not to mention some of the more elderly guests, were beginning to melt in the late May heat that had managed to override the hotel’s cooling system. When Terrie pointed out to me that Greg’s cell phone was like a fifth—or in his case, sixth—appendage, I averred, with only the barest hint of hysteria in my voice, that his battery must have gone dead, of course, that had to be it, because, after all, he’d helped me pick out the lousy flowers, for God’s sake, not to mention the cake and the invitations, so why wouldn’t he show up for his own goddamn wedding?

  “Maybe he’sa dead?”

  We all looked at my grandmother, calmly plucking at her underpants through the skirt of her new pink dress, who, being basically deaf as a post, had delivered this line loud enough to reach the Bronx.

  I shot a don’t-say-it look at my mother, resplendent in some schmata straight from The Lion King. Although, frankly, as the guests began to filter out in embarrassed silence, as the judge—flanked by Phyllis and Bob Munson, Greg’s parents—mumbled his condolences, as I bleakly surveyed the lavishly decorated, now-empty ballroom, I have to admit Kill the bastard had shot to the top of my To Do list.

  There’s no need for your mother to pay for the wedding, Greg had said. Between us, we can foot the expenses, right?

  Considering what we were doing when he laid that proposal on the table—which, come to think of it, pretty much describes our activity at the time—he could have probably suggested just about anything and I would have agreed. But even once again clothed and in my right mind, I still thought, well…sure. We both had solid careers— Greg had made partner in his midtown law firm before thirty, and my growing client base meant I hadn’t had to furtively paw through a markdown rack in years. Although, since Greg thought we should go halfsies, it meant dipping into my savings. Okay, annihilating them. We weren’t talking city hall and a reception at Schrafft’s. But, hey, Greg Munson was the pot of gold I’d inadvertently tripped over at the end of the rainbow. It was worth it, right?

  Do you have any idea how much a Vera Wang wedding dress costs?

  Do you have any idea, Shelby had said, appalled, when I’d weakly insisted, my eyes locked on my enchanted reflection in the dressing room mirror, I’d be just as happy with the ivory silk shantung Ellen Tracy suit I’d tried on three days ago in Bergdorf’s, how much you’d regret blowing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look like a princess?

  Do you have any idea, my mother had said, equally appalled, when I dragged her and Nonna into the Madison Avenue showroom to model the gown (Shelby’s princess comment having effectively annihilated my sticker shock), how many homeless people you could feed for what you just threw away on a dress you’re only going to wear once?

  Damn, girl, Terrie had said, hands parked on rounded hips that have seen action in two marriages and any number of skirmishes, you actually look like you’ve got tits in that dress.

  Could somebody hand me a tissue?

  My mother tried to convince me to ride back uptown with her and my grandmother, spend the night with them in my mother’s Columbia University-owned apartment. Since I’d basically rather put out my own eye, I declined. Which may seem extremely disrespectful to those of you who have someone other than Nedra Cohen Petrocelli as your mother.

  Okay, I suppose I’m being just the teensiest bit unfair. Nedra means well, she really does. It’s just that she tends to suck the life force out of anyone unfortunate enough to find himself or herself within a city block of her.

  Sometimes, when I look at a photo of my mother when she was younger and skinnier, I swear to God it’s like looking into a mirror. The same black springy hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones, long limbs, a wide mouth that often gets us into trouble. Personality-wise, though…well, let’s just say genetics took a dive into the deep end of the pool there. While Nedra literally goes limp if she’s deprived of human company for longer than two hours, I need solitude in order to recharge. Her reaction to tragedy or stress is to invite a dozen chums over for dinner. Mine is to clutch my mortification—and in this case, a bottle of very expensive champagne—to my flat little chest
(genetics played a nasty little trick on me there, too) and retreat to my lair.

  A lair that, though miniscule and un-air-conditioned, I am now exceedingly glad I did not give up, even though I’d moved most of my clothes and stuff to the Scarsdale house last week (note to self: new clothes?). So. Here I sit, in a frothy heap in the center of the pseudo-Turkish rug I bought three years ago at one of those Fifth Avenue emporiums that’s been going out of business since 1973, swigging the bubbly like it’s diet Coke and entertaining myself by counting how many times my answering machine has beeped. Since I’m sure at least half the calls are from my (disgustingly stereotypical) mother, I have no interest in hearing who they’re from. Not even if one of them’s from Greg.

  Especially if one of them’s from Greg.

  I should really get out of the dress. It itches like hell, for one thing. But I can’t. Not yet. I know, it’s stupid. And it’s not as if I think that Greg’s suddenly going to show up, all smiles and profuse apologies, and we’ll just zip right back to the hotel and get married as if none of this ever happened. Which we couldn’t do anyway because the guests are long gone and the caterers already took away all the food and the judge had another wedding later this afternoon and I’ll never get my hair back the way Alphonse had it—

  You know what really fries my clams? (I stare at the bottle as I think about this, finding a certain comfort in the predictability of the oscillating table fan’s intermittent, albeit ineffectual breeze.) Before I met Greg, I was perfectly happy. Didn’t feel like anything was missing from my life, you know? Oh, sure, I suppose I assumed I’d get married one day, since most people do, especially if they want kids. Which I do. I mean, hell, even my mother had gotten married—to my father, conveniently enough—and this is a woman who redefines the term “free radical.” But I hadn’t been stumbling around, desperately searching for my other “half” and crying in my latte because I’d reached the ripe old age of thirty without finding him. Dating has never been goal-oriented for me. No, I swear. I went out on the odd occasion, had sex on even odder ones, but you know, there’s something to be said for being able to rent any damn video you want, watching it when you want, wearing whatever you want, eating whatever you want without getting grief from whoever else is in the room with you. And if I’ve never exactly been the type to make men salivate…so what? I have a flourishing career, this fabulous East Side studio I’ve been illegally subletting for five years, and a hairdresser who hadn’t gasped in horror when I’d removed my hat that first time.

  So things were fine. Before Greg, I mean. Then he goes and does this, leaving me with that fresh roadkill feeling.

  But why should I feel this way? Am I any less whole than I was before four o’clock this afternoon? Is my sense of self-worth any less diminished because some idiot has seen fit to screw up my life for the foreseeable future? Is my hair kinkier, my nose bigger, my chest smaller?

  I look down to check; reassured, I take another swig of champagne, right from the bottle. No muss, no fuss, no bubbles in the nose.

  Hmm. I seem to have lost all feeling below my knees.

  Oh, hell…there must be a hole in the screen, ’cause there’s a pissed off mosquito in here somewhere…no, wait. That’s my intercom buzzer. Which means either I ordered Chinese and don’t remember, which is very possible, or somebody—most likely my mother, which is a depressing thought—has come to bear witness to my degradation.

  I hoist myself upright, willing sensation back into my feet, after which the dress and I float over to the intercom. After only three or four tries, I manage to poke the little button and grunt, “Go ’way.”

  But wait. The buzzer is still buzzing. I finish off the champagne—I feel the need to interject at this point that I am not a drinker, that in fact this is the first serious alcohol to pass my lips since my cousin Shelby’s wedding in 1996, which is probably why I am seeing multiples of everything right now—on the off chance that it will clear my head. I was wrong. I also realize that the pissed-off mosquito is not trapped inside my intercom but is, in point of fact, hovering outside the front door to my apartment.

  I burp delicately, gather up as much of the dress as I can catch, and embark on a zigzag course toward where I last saw the door. I possess just enough…something to peer through the keyhole. “Whoozit?”

  “Ginger Petrocelli?”

  I steal a moment to wonder, as I do from time to time, what on earth possessed my parents to name me Ginger, before clunking my forehead against the door and peering through the peephole, which affords me a distorted glimpse of a vaguely familiar clefted chin, hooded blue eyes and a very male hand with neatly trimmed nails clutching an official-looking ID. The guy says his own name, I think, but a fire truck chooses that moment to blast its horn eight stories below my open window, so I don’t hear it. I also almost wet my pants, which, considering the amount of champagne I have consumed, could have been disastrous.

  So, I try to read the ID. Only there is no way I can focus enough to see the name, let alone the face beyond it. But I sure as hell catch the N.Y.P.D. part.

  My stomach lurches. Until, always one to see the bright side to things, I console myself with the thought that at least it’s not my mother.

  Ohmigod. My mother.

  Images of a taxi door slamming shut on my mother’s Lion King tent and dragging her for ten blocks through midtown traffic spur me to fumble with the first of the three locks I’d bothered with when I came in—

  Waaaaitaminnit.

  “How do I know…” I brace one hand against the wall. When the dizziness passes, I say, “How do I know you’re really the police?”

  Through the three-inch-thick door, I hear what sounds like a very patient sigh. “Dammit, Ginger—did you bother looking through the peephole? It’s Nick Wojowodski. Open up.”

  With a gasp, I undo the rest of the locks and swing open the door. A hand darts out to catch me as I stumble out into the hallway, tripping over a foil-covered something on the floor and straight back to June 16, 1992. “Holy crap,” I breathe, snared in a pair of eyes the color of the New York sky that one day in October it’s actually blue.

  Nicky tries valiantly not to wince from the fumes while I, equally valiantly, try not to wince from the memories.

  My father’s cousin’s daughter Paula’s wedding to Nicky’s older brother Frank. I was one of twelve bridesmaids. The gowns were hideous and I was in serious vengeful mode. And old Nicky here was the best man.

  Well, he sure as hell was the best man I’d ever had, up to that point. I didn’t stand a chance, not against those lethal eyes and all the champagne I’d lairped up (do we see a pattern here?) and a hundred-eighty pounds of solid, uncomplicated maleness with an equally solid, uncomplicated erection the size of Cincinnati plastered against me when we danced. Especially in light of the fact that my boyfriend…Jesus, what was his name? Doesn’t matter, I forget now, but he’d just ditched me in favor of some female Visigoth from Hunter College with serious bazongas and even more serious mutilation issues, and I was feeling lonely and horny and boring and Nicky was all too willing to do what he could to bolster my sagging self-esteem. Not to mention relieving me of my virginity, which was beginning to get a little frayed around the edges anyway.

  Which he did, all righty, in a storage room about twenty paces behind the altar.

  “I’ll call you,” he’d said. Only he hadn’t.

  I don’t think I’ve seen Paula more than two or three times since then. We were never really close, anyway; she just asked me to be a bridesmaid to make an even dozen. Besides, she lives in Brooklyn. We do, however, touch base from time to time whenever there’s a family crisis or something, since her grandfather and my grandfather were brothers. So I know Nicky lives on the third floor of the Greenpoint house Frank’s and his grandmother left to the guys a couple years ago, that he went through the police academy, eventually became a detective. What I didn’t know was that he was assigned to the 19th Precinct. Which would be mine.r />
  Trying to work up a good head of anger, I watch as Nicky squats down to pick up the foil-wrapped whatever, which I’m gathering is something homebaked from Ted and Randall across the hall. There’s a black satin ribbon tied around it.

  Nicky straightens, frowning at the ribbon for a second before he hands me the package. I shift the empty bottle, which I can’t seem to let go of, to take it. A comforting, lemony smell drifts upward. Wow. Ted must’ve gone straight into the kitchen the minute he got home from the wedding.

  “Hey, Ginger,” Nick says in this gruff-gentle voice, and the anger just goes poof along with the fear that my mother’s body parts are scattered all over 57th Street. I mean, really, like I’ve got the energy to be ticked about something that happened ten years ago when I’ve got a much juicier, more recent affront to my pride to deal with.

  My eyes narrow. “Why are you here, Nicky?”

  Nicky plants his hands on his hips—ever notice the interesting places men’s jeans tend to fade?—his eyes like blue flames under thick, dark blond hair, his mouth turned slightly down at the corners, and I think, is it me, or is this weird? That I’m standing here in a wedding dress my husband will not be tearing off my body tonight, holding consolatory, still-warm baked goods from my gay neighbors, whilst strolling down memory lane about a quickie in a church closet?

  That I’m staring up at the iron jaw of the man who ten years ago annihilated a pair of brand-new, twenty-dollar Dior bikinis and who, it pains me to admit, I would probably allow the same privilege today? That is, if I were not of the current opinion that all men should be shot.

  “Look,” the Virginator says, “this is sort of…unofficial. I’m not even on duty, in fact, but…” He grimaces. “Mind if I come in?”