Unhinged_by_Rick_Reed

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Ernie would be pleased. I had worked all day getting the place ready for his return home from work. I had started by shoving the furniture, rugs, and boxes to alternating sides of the big room that was our new home and cleaning the hardwood floors until they gleamed. I had spackled holes in the wall, smoothing them with sandpaper, and when they were dry, touching them up with white paint. I had cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom until they sparkled.

And then I had set to work unpacking boxes, arranging furniture, laying our odd assortment of rugs (everything from braids to faded and worn Orientals to bold contemporary patterns that somehow all seemed to work together). Finally, I hung our meager collection of art, mostly framed posters from Ikea and photos of Ernie and me on our travels (Bermuda, London, Madrid, Niagara Falls) in just the right places.

By the time late afternoon arrived, with its long shadows and dusky rose light, and I turned on some table lamps, the place truly looked like home. Satisfied, I poured myself a glass of Syrah Ernie I had opened the night before and collapsed into the overstuffed couch we had covered with a dark blue velvet blanket. I sighed with contentment.

Ernie would be home soon enough from his job downtown, where he worked as a tech guy for a professional association, keeping their computer system updated and running. He was a practical guy, unlike me. It was part of the reason we got along so well—we complemented each other.

I, on the other hand, was a “creative type” or at least that’s how Ernie referred to me. Yet my Chicago Art Institute education in visual arts was currently being wasted in yet another dead-end job at a silk screening company that did custom designed T-shirts. I made the princely sum of fifteen dollars an hour. But at least the place was generous with time off, which is what allowed me to stay home that week and make our new place a perfect little nest.

As soon as I finished my wine, I’d start on a special homecoming dinner, simple but elegant—some grilled salmon atop a bed of linguine tossed with basil, capers, and lemon—and that laid over a bed of fresh arugula. Ernie and I might have been poor, but we ate well. I would put on some mood-setting music, I was thinking Oscar Peterson, and looked forward to truly christening the new place in style.

I was glad the previous tenants had left behind that privacy screen, which was mobile and would shut out prying eyes from travelers on the el. No telling what Ernie and I would get up to behind that screen!

I had just let my head loll back on the couch, the delicious blackberry aftertaste of the wine in my mouth, when my momentary peace was broken by a knock on the door. I sat up straighter, pinching my arm to make sure I was truly awake, and wandered over to the door, half expecting it to open of its own accord and some phantom little man to enter.

But the knock sounded again as I neared the door, and I realized whoever was on the other side had the good manners to wait until I invited him or her inside. I glanced through the peephole and a distorted woman’s face leered back at me—the nose seemed absurdly long and almost canine, the eyes tiny and porcine.

“Just a sec.” I opened the door a crack and was relieved to see the woman on the other side was not nearly as monstrous as the peephole made her out to be. She was a little older than I was; I would put her at approaching forty, with a broad, kind face, warm green eyes, and a riot of curly red hair that looked absolutely untamable. A big multicolored caftan hid her large frame. She looked funny—and I mean that in a good way.

“So you’re home?” Her voice carried with it a bit of a Bronx accent.

“Yeah. Did you always have a flair for the obvious?” I laughed to let her know I wasn’t being mean.

“I always had a flair for baking, dumb ass.” She rolled her eyes and grinned at me. “I’m Paula Prentiss, your new neighbor.” She shifted the tea-towel-covered dish she was holding to her left hand, so she could extend her right.

We shook.

“You know, like the actress?”

I shook my head.

“Paula Prentiss?”

I shook my head again.

She waved me away. “Ah! You’re too young. Anyway I brought you and your man some of my special apple raisin cinnamon muffins.” She held the plate out to me and I took it. “People don’t welcome their neighbors enough in this world, so I try to do my part, you know?” She c****d her head, waiting, I suppose, for me to agree.

“That’s really nice of you.” I stepped back and held the door open wider. “Do you want to come in? I just opened a bottle of red wine.”

She pinched my cheek and waltzed right in, a cloud of something that smelled like patchouli trailing her. “A boy after my own heart. I’m gonna like you.”

She made herself at home on the couch and looked around. “Nice. Looks about a 110 percent better than how the last guys who lived here had it.” She snorted. “They were pigs.” She thought for a moment. “But lovable piggies.”

I was getting ready to ask her about them, but she blurted out, “I hope you’re not gonna keep a girl waiting for that wine.”

“Right away.” I poured her a glass, topped my own off, and sat down beside her on the couch.

“Thanks.” She took a swallow like the wine was water and burped behind a manicured hand. “Good stuff.” She turned to me. “So what’s your name? What’s your story?”

“I’m Rick D’Angelo. I just moved over here—all the way from Eastwood, a vast journey of about two miles. I’m a graphic designer.”

She looked around the place again. “I can tell you got an artistic eye. I should have you take a look at my place, see if there’s anything I can do to make it look classier. On the cheap, of course. I don’t make a fortune working the cosmetics counter at Nordstrom on Michigan Avenue, you know.”

I wanted to laugh out loud at this woman, not in a way that would ridicule her, but just to let her know I appreciated her effusive warmth and humor.

“You live in the building.”

“Just down the hall. I’m your next-door neighbor. You ever need a cup of sugar, you know where to come.”

“Thanks.”

“Not my place. I just used the last of the sugar to bake those muffins. There’s a 7-Eleven down the block.”

I took a sip of my wine and got back to the question I’d wanted to ask. “So, you knew the guys who lived here before?”

“Oh yeah. Tommy and Karl.” She took a sip of her wine. “They were gay boys just like I’m assuming you and—what’s his name—are. Correct me if I got the wrong idea, but you just don’t see too many straight guys living in a studio together with one bed.” She snickered.

“His name is Ernie. And yes, we’re a couple.”

“A couple of what?”

I rolled my eyes, and Paula put a placating hand on my thigh. I noticed she had bright red nails so long they curved at the tip. “Sorry, hon, I meant no offense. If it weren’t for gay guys, I’d have no friends at all!” She laughed.

“So what were these gay guys—Tommy and Karl—like? Why’d they move?”

Paula’s face grew dark, and her eyes took on a faraway cast. She drained her wine glass, and I thought I was pretty safe in assuming she was doing so to buy herself some time. It was obvious I had touched a nerve.

“What?”

She held out the glass. “A smidge more?”

“Sure.” I poured her some more wine and sat back down.

Paula shrugged. “I don’t know. They were nice enough when they moved in a couple years ago. But then they got involved with some bad stuff.” She took another long swallow of wine. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

I didn’t feel I knew Paula well enough to press her. But I wanted to. Her evasiveness had my curiosity up. Bad stuff? What could that be?