If It Ain't Broke

by Brenda Barrett

  "Petrina." He looked at her scornfully. "Get out of my study. Get out of my house. Get out of my life…Your antics, your outspokenness, I will not tolerate anymore. I will mail you a cheque for services already rendered. Now get out."

  Pinky visibly quailed. "I won't apologize," she shouted, "and this time I am not coming back. You fire me every time I tell you the truth. I am fed up with you and your pity fest over Kelly."

  She walked out of the study and slammed the door.

  Chris swiveled in his chair to face the window. He was boiling mad. So mad that he sat in the dark for hours trying to cool off. He heard the front door slam with force and then heard a car at the front.

  Pinky was gone once again. He waited to feel the lightness that her departure would cause but the heaviness in his mood was still there.

  He stayed in his chair until late into the night. He finally got up and headed to bed. He left the unopened manila envelope on his desk.

  Chapter Five

  The house was quiet on Friday morning when Chris got up from a troubled sleep. Usually, there was a cacophony of noise when Pinky was around. She sang loudly and effusively to her favorite gospel songs when she was in the shower and even in the sprawling six-bedroom house he could hear her down the hallway belting out some song or the other.

  This morning the place was eerily quiet as if the life had been sucked out of the house. Even Griffin, the multi-colored cat with a sash of white over his right eye was looking at him accusingly. He was waiting for Chris when he stepped out of the bedroom, he gave Chris a half hearted meow in greeting and headed toward Pinky's suite of rooms, standing at the door and looking back at Chris dejectedly.

  "I can't believe this," Chris mumbled. "I am not going to let you and Pinky run my life."

  Griffin still looked at him in feline accusation.

  He kissed his teeth and headed toward Pinky's rooms. Last time he had fired her, she had not taken all her things that had been an indication that she had intended to come back.

  Her bedroom door was ajar; he pushed it open fully and Griffin ran ahead of him. He was met with the sweet subtle smell of Pinky's perfume; she always smelled so good to him.

  The small sitting room was empty except for a gum wrapper on a side table. The spacious bedroom was devoid of all her belongings except for a textbook on the dresser and a picture of her stuck in its pages. She was using it as a book-marker. He smiled to himself and drew it out.

  There were several other pictures in the book too. He drew them out slowly and looked at them intently. There was one of her in a bathing suit with her brother Charles grinning in the camera. There was also one with her being held by a muscular guy who looked as if he was bench-pressing her. They were both grinning at the camera. She had in long gold braids and looked impossibly young and carefree.

  He felt a slight twinge in his chest when he thought about how he shouted at her last night. He also felt a twinge of jealousy seeing her in the arms of the muscular guy.

  He sighed and jammed the pictures back where he found them. The picture that he had dragged out first was on a chapter entitled Molecular Mechanics. He remembered her telling him that when she used her pictures as bookmarkers she associated the pictures to the topic she was studying. At the time he had thought she was being ridiculous, but now he could see how it would work. Even though Pinky sometimes appeared to be scatterbrained and carefree, he could sense her intelligence and maturity. She just saw things from a different perspective than he did.

  He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Griffin who was staring up at him with a question in his eyes. Where is she?

  "Probably at her brother's place in Flatbush," Chris said out loud to the cat.

  Griffin jumped onto the bed and rubbed his head on Chris' hand.

  "I am not going to be molly coddling you like Pinky does," Chris said to a purring Griffin. "Pinky allows you to get away with too much."

  Chris laid on the bed and Griffin lay on top of him while he massaged his ears.

  "And I won't ask her to come back either. You and I both know that this place didn't need a housekeeper in the first place. Pinky was just a huge distraction with her pert breasts and shapely bottom and her pinker than pink lips. Besides, whoever heard of a housekeeper with a pixie hair-cut dyed in blonde and who could recite all the chemicals found in household polish, know their places on the periodic table and their reaction to each other? Pinky was no housekeeper." Griffin meowed in ecstasy at the caress and Chris inhaled deeply.

  He sighed. He remembered the first time he had seen her, she was at Great Pond Church singing with a group of girls. He had only stopped by that Wednesday night to drop off a package for a friend. He had started avoiding the church since Estella, the girl he was dating, had revealed to Theo that he had been having an affair with Kelly, but that night he had to make an unavoidable stop.

  Surprisingly, from the group of eight girls, his eyes had zeroed in on Pinky—petite and pretty with a perky attitude that you could see on her face.

  She hadn't seen him that night, but he knew she noticed him the day she came for the interview. She had been tongue tied at first, but then her chirpy attitude had kicked in.

  He could recall thinking—uncharitably—that he wanted her to keep working at Villa Rose for the duration of her studies just so he could see her everyday, but Meghan had come back and his mother had been hounding him to get a housekeeper.

  On the spur of the moment he had hired Pinky and fired her a couple times since but somehow this felt final. Last night he had been furious and he was not in any mood to apologize. Pinky was not right for his peace of mind.

  She made him feel uneasy, like a small pebble stuck in the corner of his shoe that he could not get out. Well, this time he pried her out and he was not letting her back in. He took one deep whiff of her scent again and stopped rubbing Griffin's head.

  "Get up, cat; it's just you, me, and Maud. Camille and Kenneth will be staying over for a few weeks so you'll have one more person to fawn over you since Camille likes cats. By the time they are gone we won't even remember that Pinky Black was here. I'll return her book today; she probably needs it to study and then we are well rid of her."

  Griffin blinked at him and meowed sorrowfully.

  *****

  "Why on earth are you crying?" Charles asked Pinky impatiently.

  "Because I left my dratted book at his dratted place," Pinky hiccupped. She was in her Uncle's room. They both thought of it as the guest room because the place only had two bedrooms and her uncle hardly stayed at the house when he came anyway.

  "You've been crying since I came to pick you up last night and I heard you sobbing away in here late into the night. You have the hots for Chris Donahue, admit it. That's the first step out of addiction, Pinky—admitting you have a problem."

  "Shut up," Pinky said, wiping her eyes. "I have an exam in five days, I need that book."

  Charles leaned on the doorjamb. "Talk to Uncle Charles, I was recently heart broken. I can relate."

  "You didn't love Phoebe," Pinky snorted, "you had a crush on her because she is gorgeous. If you had loved Phoebe you would not have moved on so quickly with Tanya."

  "Ah." Charles moved from the doorjamb and sat on the bed. "So you love him. You don't just have a crush on him because he's gorgeous?"

  "Argh," Pinky growled, "you are something else."

  "So what happened?" Charles asked. "Last night I could barely get two words out of you. I thought he had beaten you, or something, the way you were wailing when you got into the car."

  "He doesn't like me like that," Pinky said forlornly, "he loves Kelly Palmer. Remember at Phoebe's wedding you saw this lady with curly hair at the front; she was in this nice swirly halter neck dress. Her husband did the ceremony."

  Charles nodded. "That's Erica's sister. She's nice—really nice."

  He grinned.

  "She's not that nice," Pinky said scornfully, "I saw two strands of silver hair
in her lustrous curls. Two." She held up her fingers scornfully.

  Charles laughed. "That's it? That's all the criticism you can find for her? I have more than two strands of silver hair on my head and I'm only twenty-five."

  Pinky sighed. "I've been trying to find something wrong with her physically but I can't. And I mean I've tried hard."

  "So what if he loves her?" Charles shrugged. "The woman is married and looks happy to me. You should have seen her and the husband dancing closely at the reception. It's a good thing Chris didn't stay for that or he would have had a seizure. They were looking in each others eyes and he was whispering sweet nothings in her ear."

  "They had an affair," Pinky said smirking. "He slept with her, knocked her up, the last child is Chris'."

  Charles frowned. "You don't have to sound so gleeful when you say it. This whole situation must be tough on them."

  Pinky slumped her shoulders. "Sorry, I know I shouldn't be feeling resentful towards Kelly but she should have known better than to have an affair and encourage Chris."

  "They are both adults."

  "I know. I know. It's just that she's my love rival," Pinky said to Charles pettishly. "She has my man's affections."

  Charles laughed. "You mean your boss' affections."

  "That's right, my boss and only my boss. He's a boss by the book, only tolerating me like I'm an employee. If he could have an affair with her, why can't he make even a slight pass at me?" Pinky asked plaintively. "Why can't he leer at me…act all sleazy and repulsive…treat me like a thing…slap my ass when I pass by? Why is he so gentlemanly, and standoffish, and cold?"

  "Because you are an ugly troll," Charles said grinning, "and he has to prove to you that not all men are animals with sex at the forefront of their minds."

  Pinky threw a pillow at him. "I am serious, if he lost all control over Kelly, a married woman, why can't he lose control over me. Love me. What is it about that one woman that has him so darned fixated? Argh..." She banged her head on the wall.

  "Do I need to be super-sexy? Do I need to be married to a pastor?"

  Charles cleared his throat. "It's simple, Pinky."

  "It is?" Pinky asked looking at her brother with avid curiosity.

  "You just have to be his first love, but that first love seems to be Kelly," Charles said. "Some men never ever get over their first love. They function in other relationships but their first love holds the key to their heart. They'll ditch their current women with a million and one kids if their first love crooks a little finger and says I'm available. The problem here is that Kelly was Chris' first love; I am thinking Theo must have been Kelly's so she stuck with him."

  "That's rubbish!" Pinky gasped. "People move on from that sort of thing. Time generally takes care of that."

  "Nope," Charles said contemplatively, "this first love theory thing has merit. Especially if you haven't lived with a person and gotten to know their faults and their quirks and all the other boring stuff, then they will be forever in your mind as the ideal. I think that's what your boss is going through."

  "But they had sex and got to experience the forbidden," Pinky whispered, "the mystery was solved for both of them, there was no more need to wonder what if."

  "The sex part made it worse." Charles got up. "It showed him what he was missing. And to make it worse she has his baby. I think you should forget about Chris Donahue, he's not a good option for you right now. He is badly damaged goods. You'll always be second best to Kelly."

  Pinky looked at Charles with a scared look in her eyes. "But he's my first love. Am I going to be damaged goods to any man after this?"

  "No," Charles grinned, "you'll get over it. You can stop the cancer of emotion from spreading and set things right, now. One day you'll find a guy and wonder why on earth you were so hung up on Chris Donahue. In the meantime, want me to run up to his place and get your book."

  Pinky opened her mouth and then closed it. "I...I...could just call..."

  "Addicted," Charles said shaking his head.

  "Who died and made you relationship guru?" Pinky asked bitterly.

  "I have seen a lot my child." Charles scratched his goatee. "I am thinking of dying my goatee blond like your hair. What do you think?"

  Before Pinky could answer her cell phone rang. She picked it up absentmindedly,

  "Hello."

  "You left your textbook," Chris said to her. "I have it at my office. Want me to drop it off somewhere later?"

  "Er..." Pinky looked at Charles in panic, "I... er..."

  "I just thought of this," Chris said ignoring her stammering. "Caleb is trying out some new dishes. You can come by and try them out with me at lunch."

  He hung up before she could say no. She stared at her phone bemused.

  "Oh boy," Charles said leaving the room. "Unfortunately, I am going to have to leave you and your love life for a while. I am going to be staying at the hotel for the next couple of weeks, management training plus my job. This is the busy season, you know."

  "So aren't you going home for the Christmas holiday?" Pinky asked. Their parents lived in deep rural Hanover. Christmas there was usually a traditional event filled with traditional Jamaican dishes, extended family and lots of laughter.

  "No, don't think so," Charles said sorrowfully, "maybe only Christmas day. I want to be one of the four management trainees chosen from the program."

  "I guess I'll find my way there then," Pinky said, "alone."

  "I'll talk to you later," Charles said hurrying out. "Remember that Chris Donahue is damaged, so handle with care."

  Pinky pondered the things that Charles had said. He had a point. Chris was damaged goods and she would forever be second best. She looked at her suitcases and contemplated whether she should unpack them.

  Chapter Six

  When Pinky arrived at Villa Rose, Meghan waved to her. "Hey, Girl."

  "Hi Megs. I am here to see Mr. Donahue."

  "He said you should go right into the conference room." Meghan smiled. "And may I say, your shoes look fabulous."

  Pinky looked down at herself. She was dressed in a bronze Onesie short suit that closely matched her complexion and a pair of multicolored wedge sandals that she had picked up at a craft fair from a Rastafarian man who did them as a hobby.

  "It's custom made." She laughed at Meghan. "Go down to the craft village and ask for Fitzroy. Tell him that Pinky sent you."

  "Okay, definitely will—thanks." Meghan smiled at her.

  Pinky inhaled sharply and walked to the conference room. The first thing that hit her when she opened the door was the scent of delicious food.

  Caleb was in there with Chris. The two men looked up when she walked in and Caleb whistled. "Pretty girl." He winked at her good-naturedly.

  "Hello, gentlemen." She sat down at the far end of the table, barely glancing at Chris.

  "Hello lady," Chris said half seriously. "Caleb is changing his menu for Christmas, so I thought you'd like to have samples with us today."

  "The three of us?" Pinky asked.

  "Sure," Chris said nonchalantly, "that's if you don't have anything else to do."

  "Are you going to apologize to me for your behavior last night?" Pinky asked, finally looking at him fully.

  It was a mistake. He looked even better than he did yesterday. He was in a gray suit and a crisp white shirt; as usual he didn't have on a tie. His hair was slicked back from his forehead in curly waves and his jaw looked clean-shaven. Those hazel eyes of his were watching her with growing incredulity.

  "Well?" He flexed his fingers. "I wasn't in the best of moods, I'm sorry for my behavior."

  "Good." Pinky nodded and got up.

  She moved closer to Chris and Caleb around the table. "What is this you have here, Caleb?"

  Caleb was watching her and Chris with a bemused look on his face.

  "Ehem, well, I...are you two dating or something?"

  "No," both Chris and Pinky said at the same time.

  "I was his
housekeeper," Pinky said. "He fired me last night."

  Caleb nodded and opened the first covered dish. "This is a sample of the several hors d’oeuvres that will be served to our guests. Please feel free to criticize."

  He watched the two of them for a while. "So why did Chris fire you?"

  "Because he is paranoid," Pinky said quickly before Chris could reply.

  Chris held up his hand. "I don't think Pinky and I are a good fit."

  Caleb's eyebrow shot up on his forehead.

  "Employment wise," Chris said quickly.

  "Anyway," Pinky said morosely. "He is still in love with your sister-in-law. And anybody else is surplus to requirements."

  "This is an ackee puff pastry," Caleb said quickly before Chris could respond.

  "Asking you to lunch was a bad idea," Chris said hoarsely. "I am sorry if I've ever given you the idea that there is any hope for a deeper relationship between us."

  Caleb got up quickly. "I shouldn't be hearing this. This is private talk. I could come back when this is sorted out."

  Pinky and Chris ignored him—staring at each other hotly. Chris only looked away from Pinky when the door made a click as Caleb made his exit.

  Pinky snorted. "Let it all out Mr. Donahue, I'm not in your employ anymore. You can't fire me again just for knowing that you spy on Kelly Palmer and that you get a report on her and your child every Thursday."

  Chris got up and looked through the conference room window, turning his back to her. Even here, the place had a nice view of the rose gardens and the sea.

  He sighed, a deep heartfelt sigh. He could see her reflection in the glass, his little pint sized terror in a bronze shorts suit and blonde hair. He had been very happy when she actually stepped into the conference room; he had missed her this morning. He hadn't realized how accustomed he had gotten to inane chatter, until today.