He smiled down at the little woman. “I got these for you,” he said, handing her a beautiful bouquet of summer flowers.
Nana giggled. She fucking giggled as she took the flowers from him. She never giggled about anything. If she found something to be funny, she had this low, raucous laugh that sounded whiskey smooth. But this? This was a high-pitched giggle of a little girl who was suddenly and without warning pleased beyond comparison. “So pretty,” she said, inhaling her flowers deeply. “And the flowers are too.” She winked at him.
Oh. Oh, so gross.
“Nana,” I groaned.
“Oh, hush, you,” she told me. “It’s not every day that I get a piece of eye candy of his caliber walking into my house. The cable repair man came the other day, but I’m pretty sure he either had gout or the plague because he was not attractive. Let an old lady enjoy the sights.”
“That’s my boyfriend you’re talking about,” I reminded her. “Not some piece of meat.”
“Paul is pretty much in love with me,” Vince told her. “He gets kind of defensive around me.”
“You must be out of your damn mind,” I growled at him, trying to keep from bursting into flames. “Because that would be the only excuse that’d make any sense for saying something like that.”
“Ignore him,” Nana said. “He thinks too much for his own good. Let me give you a tour of my house, and I will show you all the most embarrassing photographs of Paul that I have. There’s one of him dressed up as a slutty Snow White for Halloween when he was sixteen that I think you’ll just positively adore. Paul?”
“Yes, oh destroyer of any future potential relationship I may have?”
“Be a dear and take these lovely flowers Vince gave me and put them in water. It looks as if he’s gotten some for your mother as well, so take those to her. Is that scotch, dear boy? Oh, Larry will just love it. And what’s in this bag?”
“That’s for Paul,” Vince said. “I think I’ll just hold on to it while you show me Paul as a Disney princess whore. He’d probably try to open it without permission.”
“Oh, you’re absolutely right. He would always try to open the corners of his Christmas presents when he was a kid. He thought he was being all sneaky about it, but the little screams he would give when he’d see them were a dead giveaway. It was like having a tiny shrieking Christmas monkey. Speaking of Christmas, you simply must be here this year. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Christmas is seven months away,” I reminded her, trying to keep my cool.
She glared at me. “I know what month it is, Paul. I’m not so old that I’ve slid from my mental faculties and need to wear diapers.”
“And that image will never leave my head,” I said.
She shoved the flowers and the scotch into my hands before hooking her arm through Vince’s and leading him around the living room. Their first stop was in front of Johnny Depp and I smirked, waiting
for the incarnate of evil to start spewing vitriol left and right at my grandmother’s insistence. I didn’t think she actually taught Johnny Depp to say those things, but she certainly didn’t stop him either. Gigi wasn’t homophobic in the slightest. Just her bird.
But, of course, that’s not how things went. At all. I didn’t know what the fuck Vince had done, if he was some kind of cyborg sent from the future that had the power to make everyone literally roll over and expose their bellies to him like he was the greatest thing to have ever existed. Yes, I thought he was pretty dang rad, but Jesus Christ, Johnny Depp? Johnny Depp, the most hateful bird alive?
Johnny Depp adored him.
My grandmother pulled Vince up to the cage, and I could see the parrot eyeing him. I waited for the bird to call him a turd-burglar or some such nonsense when all of a sudden, Johnny Depp whistled like he was some New York City construction worker and a hot piece of ass had just walked by. It was a low sound, a lecherous sound, and I almost walked over to choke the life out of the damn parrot for hitting on my boyfriend, because that’s exactly what he was doing.
He shuffled over on his bar to get as close to Vince as he could. “He’s very pretty,” Vince said, and Johnny Depp gave a little chattering sound like he was pleased with the compliment, like he understood what Vince had said. He mewled at Vince and stuck his beak through the bars, clicking his tongue. Vince reached up and stroked between his eyes and the bird fucking sighed in pleasure. “Pretty,” Johnny Depp said. “So pretty.” He clicked his tongue again.
“You’re like some weird, gay Dr. Dolittle,” I accused him.
“You just have to be nice to animals, Paul,” he said. “They know when you don’t like them.”
“Yeah, because they’re so smart like that,” I said with a sneer.
Johnny Depp reared up and looked over at me. “Paul’s a lady-boy,” he said. He turned back to Vince. “Pretty. Pretty, pretty.”
“You two should get a room,” I said snidely.
“I see what you mean about getting defensive,” Nana said. “Paul, it’s a bird. Really, you’d think you wouldn’t get jealous over a bird.”
“Paul pretty much loves me, I guess,” Vince said with a wink.
I scowled at the both of them and went to the kitchen.