“This will probably be the most magical day ever,” he assured me.
“You say that now. I’ll ask that you remember that in two hours when you’re trying to find the best way to file a restraining order against us, or if you’re looking up support groups after being verbally raped by a parrot.”
“Hi, my name is Vince,” he intoned. “Paul’s homophobic parrot touched me in my no-no place.”
“You’re a natural,” I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
He followed me down the hall and into the living room, where Nana was waiting expectantly in her chair. She’d put on her glasses, smoothed down her hair, and sat with her hands in her lap. If one saw her like this, they’d think her a sweet, demure little old lady. Too bad the façade was all a lie. I knew the steel-trap mind and tiger’s claws that were buried underneath. If Gigi didn’t like him, she’d tear him to shreds piece by piece. I’d seen her do it before and there was little one can do to stop it.
So imagine my surprise when she saw him for the first time and her face lit up in a wide smile. Imagine my surprise when she pushed herself up from her recliner with a very unladylike grunt and practically shoved me out of the way. It was good to know where her loyalties lay, even without having ever seen him before today.
“You must be Vince!” she beamed at him. “I’m Paul’s grandmother. You may call me Gigi or Nana, whatever you wish. It’s quite lovely to meet you.”
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.