Karen Templeton - Loose Screws

“Her hair appointment must have run over.”

“Don’t start,” I say on a long-suffering sigh, but she either doesn’t hear me or chooses not to respond. Instead she treads over to a bench, sinks down onto it, drags her book back out of her tote bag and calmly resumes her reading. Not ten seconds later, however, I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of a male voice calling my name from the other end of the platform. I whip around, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sunlight bouncing off the tracks, nearly losing my cookies—literally—at the sight of the tall man in khaki shorts and a polo shirt loping down the platform toward us.

I swear under my breath, thinking it’s Greg, suddenly giving serious consideration to the idea of swooning onto the tracks in the path of an oncoming train. Except the next train isn’t due for at least an hour and as the man gets closer, I realize the man’s hair is too long and dark, his shoulders too broad, to be Greg. Instead, it’s Bill, his younger-by-ten-months brother.

Persona non grata in the Munson clan. In other words, a Democrat.

He is also apparently a leg man, given the way his gaze is slithering over the area south of my hemline.

When Greg and I were together, Bill simply never came up in the conversation. In fact, I nearly gagged on my white wine when, at our engagement party, Greg grudgingly produced this handsome, charming, six-foot-something sibling of whom I had no previous knowledge. He seemed like a nice enough guy to me, but Greg’s family acted as if the man ran drugs in his spare time.

If only.

From what I was able to glean from pumping Greg’s friends, seems Little Bill backed Big Bob’s opponent’s campaign in the last election.

Ouch.

However, now that I owe Greg basically no loyalty whatsoever, I decide to like his brother, just for spite. After all, I don’t even live in that congressional district—what the hell do I care who represents it? Besides, don’t look now, but my po’ little ol’ trounced Ego is just batting her eyes and sighing over the way the man’s grinning at me.

Not that I’m ever going to have anything to do with another man, ever again, you understand. A fact that Prudence and Sanity, in their prim little lace-collared dresses and white gloves, remind that hussy as they snatch her back from the brink of disaster, shrieking something about frying pans and fire and let’s not go there, dear.

Of course, even if they hadn’t stepped in, my mother did. I may have legs, but she has that whole Earth Mother/Goddess thing going on, and once Bill catches sight of her, I might as well go ahead and leap onto the tracks, nobody would miss me.

I watch her—or more important, I watch his reaction to her—and I think, Jeez-o-man…a body could get knocked down by the waves of sexual awareness pulsing from this man. Except then he turns back to me, and his smile widens, and the tide heads for my beach, and I think, whoa. Okay, so maybe Billy Boy is just one of those men who gets turned on by every stray X chromosome that crosses his path. Either that, or just when I finally give up trying to figure out what It is that provokes the kind of male response Nedra has effortlessly provoked her entire life, It lands in my lap.

Talk about your lousy timing.

“I happened to stop by the house today,” Bill was saying with a whiter-than-white smile aimed at first my mother and then me, “and Mother said Ginger was coming up to pack up some things from Greg’s?”

So Billy Boy talks to Mama, huh? Interesting.

“Yep. That’s the plan,” I say, firmly telling my hormones to stop whining. “So I need to stop by someplace to get some boxes….”

“Don’t worry about it.” He takes the bags from me. Winks. Starts walking away, which I presume is our cue to follow. Although the wink was kinda irritating, I can’t help but notice he has a cute tush. When I glance at my mother, I have a sneaking suspicion she’s thinking the same thing. Between my clacking mules and my mother’s clomping Dr. Scholl’s, we are making a helluva racket heading for the stairs, so much so I almost miss Bill’s saying over his shoulder, “We can load up everything in the Suburban, if you like, and I can drive you back to the city.”

There is a God.

Thanking my almost-brother-in-law profusely, we tromp down the stairs and over to the car, which is only marginally smaller than the QE II. Excited barking emanates from what I can just make out to be a hyperactive golden retriever in the back seat.

“Damn.” Bill frowns at my outfit. “I hope my bringing Mike isn’t a problem?”

I give a wan smile, shake my head, trying to dodge the effusive beast as he rockets out of the car when the door’s opened, frantic in his indecision who to kiss first. We settle in for the ride to the Munson home—Mother has luncheon prepared for us, Bill says—my mother and I briefly skirmishing over who would sit in front. She wins.

No matter. I’d much rather have the dog than the man, anyway. Mike plops his entire front half on my lap once we’ve scrambled in, happy as, well, a dog with a human to use as a cushion. I sigh.

We start off. As always, it takes my head a while to adjust to the disproportionate ratio of cement to trees out here. But then, wiping dog pant condensation off my arm, something occurs to me.

“Oh, God. Greg’s not there, is he?”

I see Bill shake his head, his nearly black waves long enough to actually graze his linebacker shoulders. I believe the appropriate adjective to describe him is studly. His cologne is a little too strong for my taste, his attitude a bit too self-assured. And overtly supporting the enemy camp is a little ballsy, even for me. But, hey, the man has a car and is willing to cart me and all my crap back to town. He could sprout fangs and fur at the full moon for all I care.

“All I know is he’s in seclusion for a couple weeks. Nobody knows where.” Gray eyes glance at me in the rearview mirror. “Tough break about the wedding,” he says, sounding sincere enough.

Bill had been invited—I insisted—but he hadn’t shown. For far more obvious reasons than his brother’s MIA number, I suppose. I shrug. “It happens.”

I see his grin in the mirror, one a lesser mortal might well fear. Did I mention that Billy here has been divorced? Twice?

“All for the best?” he says.

“You can say that again,” I think I hear my mother mutter as I, who have been around the block more times than I care to admit, say, “Ah.”

In the mirror, I see brows lift. “Ah?”

“You’re flirting.”

Bill laughs, uncontrite. It’s a pretty nice laugh, I have to admit. “And here I was doing my damnedest to sound sympathetic.”

Okay, so the guy may be cocky as all get-out, but his honesty is refreshing. Well, it is. And it’s not as if I don’t understand the compulsion to get one’s parents’ goats, even if his methods are a bit extreme. So little Miss Ego, who’s been sulking in a corner of my brain since being banished there by her well-meaning, but self-serving, step-sisters, looks up hopefully. Not that it will do her any good. I’ve got other fish to fry.

“So…you and your mother do communicate?”

Bill shrugs. “From time to time. One of those maternal things, I suppose. She can’t find it in her heart to write me off entirely. And my father simply pretends I don’t exist.”

“Can you blame him?” I say.

That gets a laugh. “No, I don’t suppose I can.”

Which somehow prompts a conversation between Bill and my mother I have no wish to participate in. So instead I find myself mulling over Bill’s news about Greg’s “hiding out.” What does this mean, exactly, especially in regard to all those invoices I’ve sent to his office? And don’t I sound crass and insensitive, thinking about money barely a week after having my heart ripped to shreds?