Rush Klondike

Mrs. Rovello agreed to help out taking care of Nannette until I found someone to do it permanently. I was kind of hoping that she\'d want to do it permanently because they got on so well, but I guess she felt that would have been too much for her. Seventy-two could only chase three for so long before three won. I spent three afternoons interviewing contenders sent over by the nanny agency Denny had recommended and found a tough but sweet old bird who seemed to fit the bill. She had had her own kids and then had years of experience nannying for two other families. I signed Mrs. Perkins right up.

On her first day, Mrs. Perkins was a no-show and when I called the agency, they didn\'t have any idea where she was, but they promised to send a highly recommended replacement right away. So, an hour after I was supposed to be at work I opened my apartment door to find a quirky, young chica with a thick southern accent, henna dyed hair and a pierced nostril. Lula, the replacement nanny, had arrived. Once I got her up to speed and kissed Princess Pinky goodbye, I stopped over at Mrs. Rovello\'s and asked her to check in on them once or twice to make sure Nannette was okay. Yeah, I\'m an overprotective mother, bite me.

My day at Jamesfoods was nerve racking. I just couldn\'t find my timing, or my innate sense of balance, I burned things, dropped things, tripped over nothing and put way too much garlic in the dessert I was trying to work out. At the end of the day, Clive came and checked on my progress. He worked the snooty French thing real hard, but I got the idea he was actually kinda sympathetic. As I was packing up, Denny stopped by hoping to try whatever I\'d been cooking and I got some real commiseration out of him.

Denny came home with me, wanting to meet Lula. I think he didn\'t believe my description, thought I was yanking his chain. We walked into the apartment to find Lula, Nannette and Mrs. Rovello playing dress-ups and having a tea party with Pinky\'s big old bear from the circus. Naturally, Denny and I joined them. After Lula took off, Carmella gave her a good report before heading downstairs to take her pot-roast out of the oven and feed Mr. Rovello. Lula might have looked like an unreliable flake, but she knew her job and Nannette already adored her.

Since my cooking mojo had taken a walk that day, we ordered in Pizza. It was a good night, Little Cherry Blossom, Denny and me just hanging out. Denny took bath duty while I called the nanny service and they told me Mrs. Perkins was unavailable. When I pressed the woman on the other end of the line, she told me that Emily Perkins had gone to meet her maker and then I felt like a sucking horse\'s ass for all the nasty things I\'d thought about her all day. After the wee one was asleep, Denny and I played a few hands of gin and then he bid me goodnight and left.

It struck me that Denny was here a lot, like a lot a lot, like for dinner almost every night that week- and the week before, too. Not that I didn\'t like the company, but well, didn\'t he have a social life? I mean, really, Denny was young, rich, good-looking and pretty damn funny once you got used to how friggin\' dry he was. He should\'ve been beating them off with a stick. I wondered what happened to Lanie Brisbane, they had been dating for a while. I hoped he\'d\'ve mention it if he needed to talk about whatever was going on.

Maybe it was the off day, or the way I\'d suddenly noticed how much Denny was here, or maybe I was just cracked, but I couldn\'t stop thinking about him. While I cleaned the dishes, I kept wondering who the hell Lanie Brisbane was to dump Denny. I was sure that must have been what had happened. Denny sure was acting like it anyways, retreating to my little apartment for the unconditional love Little Gingerbread Girl gave out. Maybe the pop tart smell worked on heartaches as well as hangovers.

While I locked up, I tried to figure what I could do to snap him out of it and while I showered, I listed all his good points again. He was smart, young, rich, and funny. He was not really built, but he was trim, with like no fat. He had that thick, soft hair. Okay, I didn\'t know for sure that it was soft, being that I\'d never run my hands through it, but it looked soft, really soft. And he had those eyes. They were light and changeable, like they never could decide between green and blue.

While I toweled off and pulled on fresh shorts, I tried to figure out what kind of woman would really appreciate Denny for who he was and not the money or the name or even his looks. I wracked by brain to see if I knew a woman like that, but other than Mrs. Rovello, nobody good came to mind, and so I rolled over and went to sleep. Maybe I\'d come up with something in the morning.

I wracked my noggin for the better part of a week, but got no closer to figuring how to help Denny get over Lanie and I still had nobody to fix him up with. Shit, I needed to get out more. I hadn\'t met any new women in, well, since Rose Red showed up and none of the women I\'d dated before that was the type for a guy like Denny, they\'d eat him alive. So finally, I just bit the bullet and asked Den what was up, hoping that he\'d spill it all and start getting over it that way.

We were sitting in the park after a picnic lunch. Don\'t get crazy now, Denny and I don\'t picnic together much. It was a picnic because I\'d had Lula bring Princess Pinky in for lunch expecting it would cheer Denny. He had started hanging \'round my kitchen at Jamesfoods whenever he had the time and sometimes when he didn\'t. It\'s not like it irked me, I kinda did better when I had someone to talk to as I cooked, but it seemed like a bad omen that he was now hanging around me more than he wasn\'t. Anyways, we were watching Nannette play in the sandbox and I leaned over, bumped him with my shoulder to get his attention.

\"Okay, \'fess up,\" I ordered.

\"Beg your pardon?\" Denny asked.

\"Lanie. Come on, give. What happened?\"

\"Oh. Nothing happened. She was lovely and I tried to be what she wanted, but apparently I couldn\'t.\"

\"So she gave you the heave ho? That sucks.\"

\"Oh no. I broke it off. She made me itch.\"

\"Isn\'t that a good thing?\"

\"Not that kind of itch. Well, yes all right, that kind of itch too, but I meant, she made me itch to run away. Lanie was already planning our wedding on our first date and had picked out names for the children by the third.\"

\"What\'d she do on the second?\"

\"Correct my posture.\"

\"Ow!\"

\"And my grammar, and my manners and how I dressed . . .\"

\"You do dress funny.\"

\"I\'ll thank you not to disparage my sainted mother in such a way.\"

\"So okay, if it ain\'t Lanie, then what gives?\"

\"I\'m not sure to what you are referring.\"

\"Denny.\"

\"I suppose I just enjoy you and Nannette\'s company. Nannette is so like Margaret.\"

\"That\'s it? No big heartbreak? I was all ready to call some of my old associates and put out a hit on her.\"

\"You didn\'t!\"

\"Yow! Take it easy. I was just screwing with you. I never was that well connected.\"

So, all my mother henning was for nothing. Denny wasn\'t all screwed up over Lanie, he was just missing Peg and trying not to miss out on Little Cherry Blossom\'s mega cute years, you know the ones before she decides that she knows everything and some piece of bad news on a Harley catches her eye. God, that\'d only a dozen years away. Maybe I can lock her in a tower or a dungeon until she\'d thirty and too old to fall for a guy like I used to be.