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“A grad student?” I ask with what I hope is diplomacy. “You’re what? Nineteen?”
Her ferocity would almost be cute if I wasn’t starting to think this woman might actually be delusional. And if her fingers weren’t so pokey.
She jabs me again. “And I’ll have you know that I am twenty-four.”
I grab her hand before she can jab me again. “Please stop that.” My voice is no longer gentle and soothing. Maybe because this woman is really starting to piss me off. Maybe because her finger is pointier than it looks. Maybe because I’ve found myself holding her hand in mine, standing far closer to her than I should, when I haven’t touched a woman—at least not sexually—in … fuck, it’s probably been at least a year.
All of that combines to create a surge of emotion that I hardly have the capacity to unpack. More than a little irritation, a fuck-ton of frustration, and a solid dose of physical attraction.
I absolutely don’t have time for this and she’s probably too young for me. And it doesn’t matter how old she is, because … Have I mentioned that I don’t have time for this?
My best friend and most important client is in the middle of having his life implode. So no, I don’t have the time or bandwidth to be attracted to a stranger right now.
Even one who’s looking at me with the widest, brightest brown eyes I think I’ve ever seen. Don’t think brown eyes can be bright? Hers are. They’re ringed with ebony and lighten to the color of cinnamon. Hell, she even smells like cinnamon. That and vanilla and fresh baked cookies.
I don’t have time for this, but damn it, I almost wish I did.
I’m about to drop her hand and put some distance between us—I swear I’m about to—when I hear the unexpected sound of?—
“Is that a chicken?” I ask.
“Oh.” The woman pulls her hand from mine and takes a jerking step backwards. “Oh!” she exclaims a second time, looking frantically around the room. “Oh, Princess Leia! I completely forgot about her!”
“Princess Leia?” I repeat, because everything about this afternoon has taken a turn for the bizarre. I look around the room half expecting someone else in Star Wars themed clothing to pop out of nowhere.
Instead of answering me, Hot Mess Princess Leia drops to her hands and knees and makes to crawl under the bed. Perfect round ass up in the air, she wiggles her torso under the bed while murmuring, “It’s okay, sweetie. Just give me a second and I’ll get you... Ow! Damn it! I’m trying to help... Stop that!”
All the while a series of clucks and squawks emanate from under the bed. Punctuated with more exclamations of pain, from both the woman and the bird, if I was to guess.
Then the squawks increase, the muttering morphs into soothing murmuring and her butt starts to wiggle out from under the bed. A moment later she stands up. One of the hair knots is lopsided; the other is gone completely. Her shirt is crooked and her bare arms covered in red peck marks. And she’s holding a small chicken, covered in ridiculous orange fluff, in the crook of her arm.
“Princess Leia?” I ask.
The woman tips her head in confusion as she strokes the bird with her closed fist, literally smoothing its ruffled feathers. “No. Princess Lay-ah.” She says this like it should have been obvious to me. As though there should have been no room for confusion, despite the Star Wars themed T-shirt and the buns on the top of her head. “Like how player becomes playah. Layer, lay-ah. As in she lays eggs.”
As she says the word eggs, she holds out her fisted hand and opens it to reveal a small egg. I take it automatically. It’s still warm.
Apparently, that’s what all the clucking was about just now.
The chicken makes another agitated squawk. My grandmother chooses that moment to say, “Oh, is Princess Lay-ah here?”
The woman arches an eyebrow, as if the question proves some kind of a point. Then she marches over to my grandmother, chicken still in her arms.
“Yes, but she and I were just about to leave. Can you hold her for me while I pack up?”
My grandmother takes the chicken and holds her close to her chest, gently stroking the birds feathers. Her expression is serene as she coos to the bird. The woman looks decidedly less serene as she packs up an iPad and phone, all get shoved into a messenger bag dotted with Millennium Falcons, that’s then slung over her delicate shoulders. Finally, she opens the soft-sided pet carrier.
Only when she moves to my grandmother’s side do her movements gentle. She extracts the bird from my grandmother’s grasp, murmuring something barely louder than the chicken’s coos. Then, she zips the bird into the pet carrier and marches out.
The door gives its familiar buzz to alert the staff at the station that someone is leaving the room. As I watch the woman walk away, I see one of the orderlies wave at her. Hot Mess Princess Leia is not a resident, obviously. Which means she really is some kind of therapist.
And not just a therapist. Not just a gorgeous woman, either. She’s the person who has worked some kind of miracle with my grandmother. Whatever the woman and her somatic chickens did with my grandmother, Margaret recognized me as myself for the first time in … Jesus, it must be at least a year.
Once she rounds the corner and leaves my sight, I look back at my grandmother. “Who the hell was that?”
“Language, Marty. Please.”
For a moment, my grandmother looks so much like her former self, it just about kills me. Suddenly, I’m fifteen again, in her kitchen, snapping beans for dinner while I complain about some imagined injustice at school.
