Loose Screws. Karen Templeton

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.

      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?”

      I wobble out of the way, let him pass.

      All available air in the apartment has just been effectively displaced. Nicky doesn’t seem to notice, probably because he’s too busy taking in my crushed-moth look, my frizzled hair, the fact that I am slightly swaying, as though to music only I can hear. He then crosses his arms and dons a troubled expression, which I decide he practices in front of his mirror at night. I also decide we are both going to pretend ten years ago didn’t happen.

      “I’m really sorry,” he says, “but I gotta ask you this…the guy you were gonna marry, Greg Munson? When’d you last see him?”

      I hug the bottle, tears cresting on my lower lashes. Oh, God, no. Please don’t tell me I’m a maudlin drunk. “Th-thursday night.”

      “You sure about that?”

      “I’m d-drunk,” I say, indignantly, still swaying, still clutching the empty bottle to my stomach. “Not lobotomized. Of course I’m sure about that.”

      Nicky gently removes the bottle from my grasp, as if it’s a loaded gun, and glowers at it. “Christ. You drink this whole thing by yourself?”

      “Every stinkin’ d-drop.” He suddenly tilts off to one sside, just before I feel him clasp my shoulders and turn me around, steering me toward my sofa.

      “Sit,” he says when we get there.

      Not that he has to ask. I drop like a stone, the dress whooshing up around me. I also feel like giggling, which, since a policeman is questioning me about my fiancé’s whereabouts, is probably an inappropriate reaction. I look up to see Nicky and his twin doing that glowering thing again, his—their—arms crossed. I will a sober expression—as it were—to my face.

      “Seems nobody else has seen Munson since then, either,” he says. “His parents just filed a missing persons report. Tried to, anyway.”

      I feel my eyebrows try to take flight. “Already?”

      “I know, it’s premature. And probably a huge waste of time, since instinct tells me—excuse me for saying this—nothin’s happened to this guy except he got cold feet. But people like Bob Munson are very good at making waves.” Nicky glances around the studio apartment, which takes maybe three seconds. “So how come, if you were gettin’ married, all your stuff’s still here?” He looks back at me, eyes narrowed. “You don’t expect me to believe your husband was gonna move into this hamster cage with you?”

      I ignore the derision in Nicky’s voice. Okay, so between all my books, my plants, the full-size drafting table, the computer and all its attendant crap, the TV and stereo, a sofa bed, two chairs, my exercise bike, a coffee table, a bistro set, and five pieces of matching, packed Lands’ End luggage, things might seem, to the uneducated eye, a little cramped.

      “I decided to hang on to it, in case I needed to stay over in the city from time to time. Most of my clothes are out at our new house, howev—” My jaw drops. “You mean they think I have something to do with Greg’s disappearance?”

      I’m usually a little quicker on the draw. I swear.

      At that, Nicky perches on the edge of my Pier One coffee table (and if you breathe a word to my clients that my apartment is done in mass-market kitsch, you’re dead meat) and looks me straight in the eye. “What I think doesn’t matter here. God knows, it wasn’t me that came up with this asinine theory. And that’s all it is, believe me. In any case—” he digs around in his coat pocket for a scrawny little notepad and a Bic pen “—nobody’s accusin’ you of anything, okay? It’s just that, well, seeing’s as he stood you up, you do have a motive. I mean, should…”

      He stops.

      I grip the edge of my sofa bed (Pottery Barn, cranberry velvet, three years old) and make myself focus on Nicky until there’s only one of him. “Hey. I went ballistic back there,” I say, swatting in the general direction of midtown. “That wasn’t faked. I can’t fake anything,” I add, which gets a quick hitch of the pair of eyebrows across from me. “Besides, even I know you can’t have a murder without a bo—” I burp “—dy.”

      Tell me that didn’t sound as blasé as I think it did.

      Nicky is looking at me as if he’s not sure. But then he says, “Nobody’s sayin’ anything about murder, Ginger. I’m just tryin’ to fit the pieces together. All anybody wants is to find this guy and get his frickin’ father off our case.”

      “Well, why point a finger at me?” Sober, I can do high dudgeon with the best of ’em. However, considering the definite possibility that my speech is slurred, I’m probably not pulling it off as well as I might have hoped. Nicky’s long, dark, silky eyelashes sidetrack me for a second, then I say, “Sure…now, I have a motive. After he stands me up. I didn’t before this afternoon. I mean, come on…why would I want to do in the man who gave me my first multiple orgasm?”

      I try clamping my hand over my mouth, only I miss and smack myself in the chin.

      Nicky puts his pad and pen away. And in those crystalline eyes, I see…awe.