Lori Avocato - Nip, Tuck, Dead

Mother’s pine-scented Renuzit.

I sprayed a few puffs into the air and sat on the edge of the bathtub with phone in hand. Suddenly I felt a bit more relaxed, as if my Prozac had kicked in although I didn’t take Prozac or any other medication. As usual, the nostalgic pine scent did the trick.

When I searched through my cell phone book, I found Scarpello and Tonelli Insurance Company and poked the button.

“Ello?”

Adele Girard, French Canadian and like a second mother to me although in a very different sort of way, still had a slight accent even though she’d lived in the States for some time. Actually this is where she’d spent years in prison-which was another story and one that always made me root for her even though she had broken the law to pay for her mother’s chemotherapy. Tough call, but a broken law was a broken law.

“Hey, Adele. It’s me. Pauline.”

“Oh, chéri, we miss you. How is it going in Newport?”

“Actually that’s why I called you. I need your help.” After I filled in Adele about Olivia Wheaton-Chandler and asked her to run any kind of check on the woman that she could find, I at least felt as if I was doing my job. Being the doll that she was, Adele assured me she would get right on it and not tell Fabio that I was back in town. She was excellent in her job, with contacts reaching far and wide. I could always rely on Adele.

I’m sure that wouldn’t sit well with Fabio since private investigators didn’t get weekends off.

After letting the pine scent waft around me, I gathered up what mental faculties I had left and went out into the kitchen.

Mother was instructing Jagger on how to set the table!

I stood in the doorway and watched, barely believing my eyes as he took each order in stride and did as told to perfection.

Why was it that Stella Sokol could get so much out of him while I couldn’t even find out if he had a last name or a first name? Well, I had to admit, now I was more determined to find out a lot more about one Jagger. A.k.a. Jagger.

“Don’t just stand there, Pauline. Start the gravy,” Mother said.

I looked at the pink cast and cursed in my head.

Jagger grinned at me. Yes, the man could read my mind. That fact, sad but true, was proven over and over with him.

“Sure, Mom.” I turned to hurry into the kitchen. Maybe I could get the gravy done before they came in.

The door swung open just as I was bending down to look in the cabinet below the counter. “Where is the gravy, Mom?”

I heard a throat clear and swung up just in time to smack my head on the counter. “Ouch!”

Jagger Whoever stood there, grinning yet again.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you if you make a face like that it will freeze?” I asked, rubbing my head to feel for a bump or fresh blood.

“Excuse me?” He walked closer until we were eye-to-eye.

Yikes.

“Never mind,” I said and started to bend down again, all the while rubbing the top of my head.

Jagger took my arm and pulled me back up. Then he touched the top of my head and said, “Sorry about that.”

For a second my usually brilliant mind turned to gravy. “The gravy!” I yelled, very thankful for the stupid diversion. “I have to find it before Mother comes in. Where is she anyway?” I leaned past him to see if the Gestapo mother was on her way in.

Nothing.

“Your mother is in the living room. She said she’d be here in a few minutes to help.” He smiled.

I pushed his hand away from my head before the top started to burn from his touch. How pathetic was I? Maybe I should start using the thongs. Geez, I couldn’t even think about those garments with Jagger so close. “I have to make the…”

What the hell was I going to do?

He looked at me, and I swear wanted to grin. “Gravy, Sherlock. You are in here to make some gravy. You know, that pork smells good. Think it’s done?”

I pushed at his chest. “Don’t you start. Don’t tell me how to cook. I know when a pork roast is done.”

“The longer you cook a pork roast, Pauline, the more tender it becomes,” Mother said, walking in.

I hoped she didn’t see me touching Jagger even if it was only a poke. “Right. Cook longer. Yeah, got it, Ma.”

“Mother,” she corrected and perched herself on the “observation” stool.

Jagger sat next to her.

I growled inside and bent down again, this time being very careful about my head. “So where is the gravy, Mother?”

“What?”

I stuck my head out of the cabinet and repeated, “The gravy? I don’t see any.”

“Pauline Sokol. How could you see something you haven’t even made yet. I think that job is way too much for you. You need to go back to nursing, so you’ll remember you don’t find gravy under a counter.”

I shook my head and ignored Jagger’s look. “I’m happy in my job and thought you’d keep the cans of gravy down here with the cans of vegetables.”

Mother gasped.

Obviously in order not to grin like a fool, Jagger bit his lip. “Where I come from, gravy is made from scratch with the drippings from the meat,” he said.

I reached inside the cabinet for a can of anything to fling in his direction.

“Pauliiiiiiiine,” Mother said.

Soon my hand was back, empty, and I was standing up. “Okay, I give. How the hell do you make gravy?”

“Stop using that longshoreman language, Pauline, and I’ll walk you through it.”

For some reason I was more amazed that Stella Sokol used the term “walk you through it” than the fact that she thought “hell” was used by long-shoremen.

I stared at the tiny white lumps in the pan. Oh…my…God. Mother was not going to ever let me forget about this. When I took the spoon and started to poke at them, hoping against hope that they’d dissolve, I watched them pop back up like little inner tubs afloat in a sea of mud.

Pauline’s homemade gravy. Yum.

At least I’d been successful (and had the foresight) to shoo Jagger and my mother out of the room earlier with the pretense of having appetizers in the living room after throwing a few slices of cheese and crackers on Mom’s wooden cutting board.

Actually I think at least one of them was glad to leave.

Mother, however, kept kibitzing from the living room.

The gravy stared back at me and bubbled. Twice.

There had to be some secret, some trick that she deliberately didn’t tell me so I’d fail at this chore. Mother was not a vindictive person, far from it, but cooking was her life and her main function in this world-and I’d bet my last paycheck that she didn’t want anyone taking over the lead.

A splatter of gravy sputtered into the air, landing on the front of my top.

Mother had nothing to worry about.

“Pauline, I’m getting very hungry,” she said.

“Have another cracker and cheese, Ma.” Okay, I called her that deliberately so she’d start to fume in the living room and forget that I was in the kitchen from hell speckled in brown.

Suddenly I had an idea and grabbed my cell phone from my pocket. I hated to disturb anyone but this was an emergency.

“Miles, I need help now!” I whispered into the phone, still managing to sound as if I were drowning in the damn gravy.

“Oh, God. What is wrong, Pauline!”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to alarm you, Miles. Tell Gold hi for me. Hope you two are having a ball, but I have a food emergency-”

“Oh, Lord, Pauline. I never should have let you go to your mother’s house to help out cooking alone. It’s all my fault.” I could hear him interpreting every part of our call for Goldie in the background, who occasionally shrieked or gasped. And why wouldn’t he?

They knew my mother very well, and knew me even better.