Loose Screws Read Free Page B

usually strain me this much. “I was here, alone, most of that time. Packing and stuff.”
    â€œAnybody 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.
    â€œHere,” 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.
    â€œWhat?” I say when the silence drags on too long.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œâ€”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.
    â€œMy wife walked out on me three years ago,” he now says. “It sucks.”
    Wife? What wife? Paula never said anything about a wife.
    â€œWhy?” 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.”
    â€œOh. 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
    â€œY ou 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.”
    â€œUp 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