by Lois Greiman
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
About the Author
Also by Lois Greiman
I hope you enjoyed getting Unplugged, ’cuz next we’re getting . . . UNSCREWED.
A Special Sneak Peek at Unzipped
Copyright Page
To Caitlin Alexander, the only editor
who thinks I’m as funny as I think I am.
Thanks for everything you do.
You’re the greatest.
1
Matrimony and firefighting. They ain’t for cowards.
—Pete McMullen,
shortly after his first divorce
“Y OU MARRIED?”
I hadn’t known Larry Hunt thirty-five minutes before he popped the question. But the fact that he was scowling at me as if I were the devil’s handmaiden suggested our relationship would never work. The fact that he was sitting beside his wife also posed a problem for our connubial bliss. Weighing all the signs, I guessed they’d been married for about twenty-four years.
But I’m not a psychic. I’m a psychologist. I used to be a cocktail waitress, which paid about the same and boasted a saner clientele, but it kept me on my feet too much.
Two weeks prior, Mrs. Hunt had called my clinic to schedule a therapy session. My practice, L.A. Counseling, is located on the south side of Eagle Rock, only a few miles from Pasadena, but hell and gone from the glamour of New Year’s morning’s Rose Bowl Parade.
As a result of that call, Mr. Hunt now seemed to be wondering how the hell he had landed in some shrink’s second-rate office, and had decided to fill his fifty minutes by probing into my personal life. But I suspected what he really wanted to know was not whether I was married, but what made me think I was qualified to counsel him and his heretofore silent wife.
“No, Mr. Hunt, I’m not married,” I said.
“How come?”
If he hadn’t been a client, I might have told him it was none of his damned business whether I was married, ever had been married, or ever intended to be married. Ergo, it was probably best that he was a client, since that particular answer might have seemed somewhat immature and just a tad defensive. Not that I secretly long for matrimony or anything, but if someone wants to lug salt downstairs to the water softener for me now and again, I won’t spit in his eye. Even my thirty-seventh ex-boyfriend, Victor Dickenson, sometimes called “Vic the Dick” by those who knew him intimately, had been able to manage that much.
“Larry,” Mrs. Hunt chided. She was a smallish woman with sandpaper-blond hair and a lilac pantsuit. Her stacked platform sandals were of a different generation than her clothing and made me wonder if she had a disapproving daughter who had taken it upon herself to update her mother’s footwear. Her eyes were sort of bubblelike, reminding me of the guppies I’d had as a kid, and when she turned her gaze in my direction it was pretty obvious she’d been wondering about me herself.
It’s not uncommon for clients to think a therapist has to be half a couple in order to know something about marriage. I soundly disagree. I’ve never been a lobster, but I know they taste best with a pound of melted butter and a spritz of lemon.
I didn’t have a lot of information about the Hunts, but I knew from their client profiles that Kathy was forty-three, four years younger than her husband, who worked for a company called “Mann’s Rent ’n’ Go.” They both sat on my comfy, cream-colored couch, but to say that they sat together would have been a wild flight of romantic fancy. Between Mrs. Hunt’s polyester pantsuit and Mr. Hunt’s stiff-backed personage, there was ample space to drive a MAC truck, flatbed trailer and all.
I gave them both my professional smile, the one that suggests I’m above being insulted by forays into my personal life and that I would not murder them in their sleep for doing so.
“You’re an okay-looking woman,” Mr. Hunt continued. “Got a good job. How come you’re still single?”
I considered telling him that, despite past relationships with men like himself, I had managed to retain a few functioning brain cells. But that might have been considered unprofessional. It might also have been untrue.
“How long have you two been married?” I asked, turning his question aside with the stunning ingenuity only a licensed psychoanalyst could have managed. It was five o’clock on a Friday evening, and I hadn’t had a cigarette for five days and nineteen hours. I’d counted on my way to work that morning.
“Twenty-two years,” said Mrs. Hunt. She didn’t sound thrilled with the number. Maybe she’d been doing a little math on her way to work, too. “This May.”
“Twenty-two years,” I repeated, and whistled with admiration while chiding myself for overguessing. It was her pastel ensemble that threw me. “You must be doing something right, then. And you’ve never had any sort of therapy before today?”
“No.” They answered in unison. By their expressions, I had to guess it was one of the few things they still did in tandem.
“Is that because you didn’t feel you needed help or because—”
“I don’t believe in this crap,” Mr. Hunt interrupted.
I turned toward him, brilliantly even-tempered, which shows how mature I’ve become. Five years ago I would have taken offense. Twenty years ago I would have called him a wart-faced turd head and given him a wedgie. “Why ever are you here, then, Mr. Hunt?” I asked, my dulcet tone a soft meld of curiosity and caring.
“Kathy says she won’t . . .” He paused. “She wanted me to come with her.”
So ol’ Kat was withholding sex. Uh-huh.
“Well,” I said, “as I’m sure you’re aware, you don’t have to tell me anything you’re uncomfortable with.”
I glanced from one to the other again. Mr. Hunt beetled his brows. Mrs. Hunt pursed her lips. They didn’t really look like they’d be comfortable with much. Maybe a noncommittal, how-was-your-day kind of exchange—if no prolonged eye contact was required.
I cleared my throat. I hadn’t gotten much of a bead on the Hunts yet. But the law of averages would suggest that he wanted more sex and she wanted, well, maybe a nice facial and a one-way ticket to Tahiti. She looked tired. She also looked stressed enough to blow her lacquered curls right off her head.
My current forms don’t ask whether or not my clients have kids, but in the Hunts’ case, written confirmation was about as necessary as soft drinks at a bachelorette party. She had that old-woman-who-lives-in-the-shoe look about her. They’d probably spawned a good dozen of the little buggers.
“And of course,” I continued, “everything hinges on your own specific goals.”
“Goals?” asked Mr. Hunt, and rather suspiciously. As though I were trying to trick him into mental health and conjugal happiness.
“Yes.” I swiveled my chair a little and crossed my legs. I was wearing a ginger-hued sleeveless sheath and matching jacket by Chanel. Buying clothes secondhand at a little consignment shop on Sunset Boulevard, I’m able to dress marginally better than your average L.A. panhandler and can still afford my flax-colored sling-back sandals for $12.95. The shoes matched the ensemble’s piping and did good things to the muscles in my lower legs. I looked fan
tastic. Who needs a husband when you’re wearing Chanel and look fantastic? “What are you hoping to accomplish with these sessions?” I asked.
Mr. Hunt stared at me with a mixture of irritation and absolute stupefaction. I turned toward Kathy, hoping for a bit more acumen.
“What is your main purpose for coming here, Mrs. Hunt?”
“I just . . .” She scowled and shrugged. I got the feeling she might have had quite a bit of practice at both. “I thought it couldn’t hurt.”
Ahhh. A ringing endorsement. Someday I’ll have that embroidered and framed above my desk.
“So you’re not entirely content with your current relationship.” It was a guess, but judging by the anger that rolled off them like toxic fumes, I felt pretty confident about it.
“Well . . .” She throttled the strap of her beige handbag. It was the approximate size of my front door. “No one’s completely happy, I suppose.”
I gave her an encouraging smile and turned to her husband. “And what about you, Mr. Hunt? Is there anything you’d like to see changed in your marriage?”
“Things are okay,” he said, but he was still glaring at me.
I gave him my “Aha” smile, as if I knew something he didn’t. Maybe I did, but chances were, he didn’t care where my house key was hidden or how to wax his bikini line without screaming out four-letter expletives.
“So you’re here just to make your wife happy,” I said. It was a charitable way of saying I knew she’d dragged him in kicking and screaming. Nine times out of ten, that’s how it works. Men tend to think everything’s hunky-dory so long as the little woman hasn’t put a slug between his eyes within the past seventy-two hours. “It was extremely considerate of you to agree to come, then. Is he always so considerate, Kathy?” I asked, and turned toward the little woman.
The change was instantaneous and marked. Her lips flattened into an almost indiscernible line and her eyes narrowed. For a second I wondered if she’d brought a handgun with her. God knows, her purse was big enough to house a cannon and the man o’ war that carried it. Ol’ Larry might want to sleep with one eye open.
“He leaves used Kleenexes in the family room,” she said. Her tone was cranked tight, her knuckles white against her mammoth satchel—as if she’d caught Larry sans pants with the woman in charge of weed whacker rentals.
To the uninitiated, Kathy’s statement might seem like a strange opening gambit, but I’d been around long enough to realize it’s not the sordid affairs that most often end a marriage. It’s the toothpaste left in the sink. Psychology Today says, “The human psyche is a complex and fragile phenomenon.” Personally, I think people are just funky as hell.
“I have a sinus problem,” Larry said, apparently by way of defense.
“So you can’t put your Kleenex in the wastebasket?” His wife’s tone had risen to drill sergeant decibel. I glanced from one to the other like a Wimbledon spectator.
“You leave the orange juice out every damned morning. You don’t see me making a federal case of it.”
“That’s because you don’t give a crap!” she countered. “I could leave dog doo-doo on the counter and you’d just march off to work like everything was sunshine and roses.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said, his voice rising. “I’ve been bringing home paychecks twice a month for twenty-two years. You think I’d do that if I didn’t care? You think I give a damn how many floor grinders Mann’s rents out per week?”
“Yeah, I do,” she said, cheeks red and eyes popping. “I think you care more about floor grinders than you do about me.”
The room fell into abrupt silence. I refrained from grinning like a euphoric orangutan. The first half an hour had been the conversational equivalent of pabulum. But this . . . this was something I could sink my teeth into.
Fifteen minutes later I was ushering the Hunts out the front door. They still looked less than ecstatic, but they had agreed to try a couple of suggestions. He would pick up after himself on a regular basis and she would make him breakfast on Tuesdays and Sundays.
I waved congenially, then turned with a sigh and slumped into one of the two chairs that faced the reception desk. My receptionist was behind it. Her name is Elaine Butterfield. We’d bonded in fifth grade, agreeing that boys were stupid and stinky. In general terms, I still think they’re stupid. But sometimes they smell pretty good.
“Want to pick up some Chinese?” I asked.
Elaine stuffed a file in the cabinet and didn’t turn toward me. “Can’t,” she said. “I have an audition tomorrow morning.”
Elaine is an actress. Unfortunately, she can’t act.
“So you’re not going to eat?”
“Chinese makes my face puffy.”
Elaine’s face has never been puffy in her life. At ten she’d been pudgy and buck-toothed; at thirty-two she’s gorgeous enough to make me hate my parents and every fat-thighed antecedent who had ever peed in my gene pool.
“What are you auditioning for?” I hadn’t heard a single hideous line in several days, which isn’t like my Laney. Usually she spews them around the office like pot smoke at a Mick Jagger concert.
“It’s just a little part in a soap.”
“A soap opera?” I asked, managing to shuffle straighter in my chair. “You love soap operas. They’re steady work.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She shrugged and stuffed another file. “I probably won’t get the part.”
“Laney?” I tried to see her face, but she kept it turned away. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” She was fiddling through the V’s. The only file left out was Angela Grapier’s. Elaine has an IQ that would make Einstein look like a shaken-infant victim. I was pretty sure she knew Angie’s name came before “Vigoren.”
I stood up. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
“You don’t get tired.”
“Do too.”
“Laney,” I said, rounding the desk and touching her shoulder. She turned toward me like a scolded puppy.
“It’s Jeen.”
I blinked, unable to believe my eyes. Her face was puffy. And her nose, flawlessly shaped and perfectly pored, was red. “What?” I said.
“It’s . . .” She shook her head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I just—”
“Jeen?” I parroted, but then the truth dawned. For a few weeks now, she’d been dating a myopic little geek named Solberg, to whom I’d had the bad manners to introduce her. It had been patently cruel on my part, but I’d been in a bit of a bind. Some people call him J.D. I could only assume his real name was Jeen, since Elaine isn’t vindictive enough to think of such a nasty nomenclature on her own. Unfortunately, the same obviously couldn’t be said of his parents. He was short, balding, and irritating, but he had a cushy job at a place called NeoTech, and a really kick-ass car. “What about him?” I asked.
She shrugged, but her eyes were still puppy-dog sad.
“What about him?” I asked again, and suddenly I was imagining the worst. “He didn’t . . . Oh God, Laney! He didn’t touch you, did he?”
She didn’t answer.
Anger exploded like firecrackers in my head. Some people think I have a bit of a temper. My brother Michael used to call me Crazy Chrissy. But he’d earned every purple nurple I ever gave him. “Damn that nerdy little troll!” I cursed. “I warned him not to—”
“No.” Elaine shook her head, scowling. “That’s not the problem, Mac.”
I winced. Dear God, did that mean Solberg had touched her? Did that mean she’d liked it? Did that mean the world was crumbling beneath my very . . .
“Damn it, Laney,” I said, quiet now with awful dread. “He didn’t hit you, did he?”
“Of course not.” She lifted her bottle-green gaze forlornly to mine. If I weren’t a raging heterosexual I would have begged her to marry me on the spot.
I relaxed a little. “Then what’s the problem?”
“He just . . .” She shrugged again. “He hasn’t called me, that’s all.”
I waited for the bad news. She wasn’t forthcoming. “And?”
She gave me a disapproving glance as she shoved the Grapier file somewhere in the XYZ group.
“I haven’t heard from him much since he left for Las Vegas.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. I remembered her telling me about NeoTech’s esteemed presence at a big-ass technology convention. J.D. was supposed to be some kind of geekmaster there. I should have been paying more attention, but I’d been trying to deal with a few issues of my own. My septic system, for instance. It had been installed sometime before the Miocene Epoch and kept threatening to spill its venom down the hall and into my antiquated kitchen.
Then there was my love life. Well, actually, there wasn’t.
“He’s probably just busy,” I said.
“We were supposed to go to the grand opening of EU last weekend.”
I shook my head, not understanding.
“Electronic Universe,” she explained. “State-of-the-art-electronics store. The only one in the country, I guess.”
“You can go next weekend. It’ll probably still be open.”
She glanced down at her hands. “I don’t care that we missed it, of course. I mean, if you’ve seen one gray piece of plastic, you’ve pretty much seen them all, but . . . he was really looking forward to it and . . .” She shrugged as if to dismiss the whole situation. “He’s been gone almost three weeks.”
“Well . . .” I began, then, “Three weeks?” It hadn’t seemed like nearly that long since I’d seen the little Woody Allen look-alike. “Really?”
“Seventeen and a half days,” she said.
I winced. She’d been counting. A girl has to be pretty loopy to count.
“You said it was a really big deal,” I reminded her. “He’s probably just tying up loose ends. That sort of thing.”
“He said he’d call every day.”
“And you haven’t heard from him?”
“I did at first. He phoned every few hours. And e-mailed. Sometimes he’d fax me.” She gave me a watery smile. “Left text messages with little hearts.”
