Sharon Fremont was all in favor of Abby doing community service. It was what you did when you had been given so much. You gave back. Sharon wrote large cheques on a regular basis to many charities, and she volunteered her time at genteel activities like the Chicago Institute of Art and the Symphony. But Sharon wasn’t much for getting her hands dirty. Abby working with deaf children in a public school was about as much as her mother could tolerate.
“Abigail. How are the children? Are they happy to be back at school?”
“Yes, Mother, they are. Thank you for asking.” Abby was basking in the glow of her story and was emotional to the point where she was almost tempted to hug her mother. She didn’t, of course.
“I guess all children are happy to go back to school. They must be bored after the summer.”
“I guess so,” replied Abby, who had never once been happy to go back to the social nightmare called school. She loved her teachers and she loved learning, but… Then she thought of Sasha. “Yes, Mother, I guess they do.”
“That’s nice. Stop signing, Abigail.”
“Sorry, Mother,” laughed Abby. It was a habit that was hard to break. She had spent the entire morning signing everything she said and it just carried over into the rest of her day until someone pointed it out to her. It was usually her mother who did that.
“You know, Abigail,” mused her mother. “You have very pretty hands. When you sign. It’s very…poetic.”
“Thank you, Mo…” That was as far as Abby got. Her mother had left the room.
Abby went upstairs and put her school things away. She washed her hands and combed her hair. She tidied her bedroom, which was pristine to begin with. Then she went and stood in front of the computer. “What are you up to today, Princess Penelope?” she asked it. Then she sat down and started to write.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Nick was pissed. He was paying the guy after all. So he’d been late the first day, so what? He’d had an excuse. He didn’t think he needed to hear all this abuse. And he really didn’t think he needed to be called ‘fat’ anymore.
“Hey, I’ve lost nearly twenty pounds in the last three months,” Nick said defensively.
“Then you must have been totally gross before,” responded Gestapo Luke.
Nick was all ready to get angry and blow up, but then he stopped. “Yeah, I was,” he said. “And I just can’t go there again. I’m really sorry I was late. I got a lotta shit going on in my personal life…”
“Yeah, well, leave it at the door,” said Luke. He didn’t really mean that. As he and Nick got to know each other better, a lot of stuff would come out of Nick…emotional stuff…important stuff. It always happened. Luke figured it was probably like a woman with her hairdresser or something. But he knew that it was important that at the beginning of the relationship, that Nick not know any of that. He had to learn some discipline. The emotional healing would come second to the physical improvements.
“Drop and give me twenty,” he ordered. Nick did.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“Hey man. How’s it going?”
“Aw shit, Troy. I am so fucking stiff.”
“Jeez, guy. I wasn’t inquiring into your love life.”
“Oh, ha ha! I mean it, man, this new trainer. He’s Hitler come to life. No kidding! He worked me over good.”
“When do you go back?”
“Tomorrow morning. And I’d better not be late this time!”
“You were late? Big surprise!”
“Well, I overslept. I guess I overindulged the night before.”
“Why? You were fine when I left you.”
“Aww, crap with the parents.”
“Okay, I hear you.” Troy would cheerfully have killed Nick’s mother, given the opportunity. He used to like his dad a lot, but this whole marriage-breakdown thing was not working out too well on either side. “So do you want to go out and get a bite to eat? You are allowed to eat, right?”
Nick laughed. “Yeah, I can eat, but I gotta be careful, stay away from the bad stuff, fast food and fries and shit like that.”
“What about steak and salad, can you do that? We could go to Arnie’s.”
Nick looked down at the inventory list. He only had the living room left to do. He could get to that later. “Yeah, let’s,” he said. “I’ll meet you there in twenty.”
Arnie’s was an old-fashioned steak house. The interior was all red leather and dark wood. You could barely see the menu in the dim lighting. But you didn’t really need to see it. Your choice was steak. Steak on its own, steak with chicken, steak with ribs, steak with lobster. Steak. Just choose the size and the side dishes. The waitresses all wore black uniforms with tiny white aprons, like French maids in the movies. Troy and Nick came here often. No one knew about the place. No fans, that is. And Nick had never brought a girl here.
Nick waved Troy over to the booth. “I ordered you a beer,” he said.
“Is that allowed? On your diet? Beer?”
“Who gives a shit?” said Nick, and then sighed. “Not really, but as long as I only have one, it’s okay.”
“How many ‘ones’ did you have last night?”
“One for each room in my house,” said Nick.
Troy blinked. “You must have been hammered. What were you doing?”
Nick told him how he had spent the previous evening. “Man, I got a lot of useless crap.”
“Well, you were the one who wouldn’t throw out a paper napkin if a fan gave it to you.”
“That was in the beginning. I’m a little choosier now. I still keep the underwear they give me, though,” he added, laughing.
“Sometimes you scare me a little,” retorted Troy, laughing at his friend. He pictured a real estate agent showing the house to prospective customers opening a closet door and having all this female underwear fall out.
The waitress came and took their order. They ordered steak. “Baked, mashed or fries?” she intoned. Troy chose a baked potato and Nick asked for salad. The waitress looked at him like he was lacking in masculinity. Then she shrugged and walked away.
“Real men don’t eat salad, I guess,” said Nick.
“So you’re serious about selling the house?” asked Troy.
“Yeah, the appraiser came today.” Nick told Troy what the appraiser had said, how much it was worth, what the market was like today. “I’m not gonna get what I paid for it, but…that’s my own fault. I paid more for it than I should have, just because I was young and stupid and could afford it.”
“At least it’s in good condition,” said Troy. “It’s not like it was a constant party place with holes kicked in the walls and cigarette burns in the carpets.”
“Nah, it’s in pretty good shape. The appraiser asked if I’d moved a bunch of stuff out already.”
Troy laughed. The rooms that Nick used were comfortable and done to suit his taste. His living room had more electronic stuff than most stores and deep, leather sofas and chairs facing it all. The walls had paintings done in an Oriental style that didn’t really match the furniture, but Nick didn’t care. It was what he liked.
His bedroom was the same. Thought had been put into it. The rest of the house didn’t matter to him. He hadn’t even furnished most of it, just used the various rooms for storage. The first guest room only got furnished when his mother came to visit for the first time. Nick had Mary order a complete suite of furniture for it, including bedding and drapes. When she asked him if he would like her to do the same for the second guest bedroom, he just blinked at her. Why? he had asked.
“So what does Abby think about you selling the house?” asked Troy, after their food had been set in front of them.
Aw crap! thought Nick. I never got around to asking Mrs. M. where she put the computer. “She’s fine with it,” he said in a non-committal voice. “It doesn’t really have anything to do with her.”
“How much does she know about Ronni?”
More than you, thought Nick. “She knows we broke up. That’s the important part. She knows it was serious.”
“And her relationship was serious too…the one she was getting over when you met?”
“Yeah, that was serious. She was really hurt. She was the one that ended it, but he treated her badly.”
Fooled around on her, guessed Troy. “Is the guy still on the scene? In Chicago, I mean?”
Nick didn’t know the answer to that. “Why?”
“Well, if he’s there and you’re here, he’s got…like home field advantage…if he tries to get her back.”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” said Nick. “She sent him away wearing tuna casserole.” He told Troy the story of the breakup, eliminating from the tale both the presence of her parents and the real reason for it.
“Sounds like a girl with spunk,” laughed Troy.
“Whatever that is,” retorted Nick. I’ve got to find that computer, he thought. I’ve got to catch up with Abby.
