Fenny sat at the computer idly going through fonts because it made her feel slightly more productive than simply staring hopelessly at the screen. She reached for the bag of chocolate chip cookies and noticed the clock read 5:30. “Reason number 437 why Fenella Sherwood should not be allowed to be a parent: spoils her appetite with cookies right before dinner. How’s that for a role model.” She shrugged at the cookie and bit it in half, wiping crumbs on her jeans.

The door to the study opened cautiously and she looked over almost guiltily. “Hey sweetie,” Brad cooed. Fenny glanced at him over the tops of her glasses, knowing full well he only called her ‘sweetie’ when he was in trouble. “Busy?”

“Not really,” she shrugged.

“I thought I’d try to make things up to you a little if I could.”

“Why do you smell like Windex?” Fenny interrupted.

“Tried to clean the wax off the coffee table. Didn’t work too well.”

“No, I can imagine it wouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry about earlier. Let me take you to your favorite little Chinese restaurant to make it up to you? I’ve made reservations and everything.”

Fenny looked up at him as he stood in the doorway. She knew she should still be angry with him, but he had gone so far as to make a cleaning gesture, she couldn’t say no. “Only if you wash off the stench of ammonia,” she smiled.

“Deal,” he beamed. And with that he dashed out of the room and in a matter of seconds she heard the shower turn on. The promise of Chinese food drained any possibility of concentrating on work from her and she sauntered towards her room to get dressed, passing Lilly as she went. It was pleasing to note she wasn’t being too destructive, watching an old episode of the Simpsons and crawling over the couch with a couple of stuffed animals.

Fenny perused her closet as the radio began playing an old Kinks song. She pulled out a pair of nice slacks and her favorite sweater, deciding it would be nice to look at least presentable. After slipping on a pair of black leather shoes she began considering the possibility of doing something with her hair.

The shower stopped and Fenny moved to knock on the bathroom door. Brad stuck his head out, still dripping wet from the shower and stubbly. “Hairbrush?” she smiled. He retreated to grab it from the counter and handed it to her with a quick kiss. “You called the sitter yet?”

“Sitter?” Brad asked innocently.

“The girl downstairs that said she’d baby sit for you. You are going to get a sitter, aren’t you Bradley?” Fenny asked, her tone getting lower and harsher with each word.

“Come on Fen, we never do anything as a family,” Brad cooed, flashing her a smile and dropping a kiss on her creased forehead before slipping back into the bathroom.

Fenny grimaced to herself as she trudged back to the bedroom to brush out her hair, not bothering to do anything with it as she turned up the radio in frustration.

Once we had an easy ride and always felt the same

Time was on my side and I had everything to gain

Let it be like yesterday

Please let me have happy days

Won’t you tell me

Where have all the good times gone

“No kidding,” Fenny grumbled as she trudged out into the living room.

“Genie, look,” Paul sighed as he dropped the underwear she’d thrust upon him into the bin and sauntered into the other room to sit next to her on the couch. “You know that I wouldn’t do anything with Freya. I don’t think the woman has the right number of chromosomes, I couldn’t just leave her sulking in the middle of the airport to die.”

“Why not?” Gina countered.

“Nothing happened, I swear to you. I spent all three days out with friends getting shitfaced to forget about the numerous times I’d nearly died, the awful plane trip home, and the fact you were still so far away. You can call the guys if you don’t believe me. I’ll call Mikey right now, he’s probably still reeling with last night’s tequila shots, it’ll be fun, we can listen to him moan in pain. Speaking of which, I could really do with a few aspirin…”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You really shouldn’t be left without adult supervision.”

“So you’re not angry with me?” Paul asked hopefully.

“I just wish you would have told me,” Gina pouted.

“I thought it would upset you,” he said pointedly.

“I want the sheets disinfected and burned.”

“Whatever you want, darling,” he smiled, reaching over to kiss her fleetingly. He moved closer to her to get an appropriate make-up kiss, but she jumped up off the sofa and headed back to the kitchen.

“Where do you keep the phone book?” she called.

“Phone book? Um, I don’t know. Why? We can burn the sheets here, go down to the beach and have a bonfire…”

“I want you to phone a realtor, see about getting a place together, remember we talked about it earlier?”

“What, now?” he gasped.

She wandered back into the lounge with the disused phone book. “Why not now?” she countered. “You have other plans?”

“Well, no, but I thought you’d just gotten home, aren’t you tired? You’ve got to rest.”

“What, in that bed?”

He let out a sigh. “If you’re that worked up about it, we can sleep in the spare room. I know you’ve got to be jetlagged.”

“I don’t care if I’m jetlagged, we’re getting away from that woman,” Gina hissed. “If we find a place together she won’t be able to find us, and the sooner the better.”

“Aren’t you taking this just a little too far?” Paul asked. “You’re ready to move at a moment’s notice just to get away from Freya?”

“That’s not why I want to move, Paul,” she said stonily. He stared blankly up at her. “Here, find a realtor and put some clothes on.” She thrust the phone book at him and stormed off.

Paul frowned at the phone book as he flipped through looking for the ‘R’ section. “And we’re back for another round of everybody’s favorite game, ‘Guess What Fucked Up Thing I Said This Time’. But first, a break from our sponsor — anything that’ll get rid of this pounding in my head…”

“It’s just chow mien, it’s like spaghetti with vegetables. Good vegetables.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Orange chicken, you like oranges.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Fried rice? I know you eat rice, I’ve seen you.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Moo goo gai pan?”

“You don’t even know what that is, Fen.”

“If she likes the sound of it she might eat it. Didn’t kill Bob Newhart.”

“What?” Brad demanded.

“Never mind,” Fenny sighed, turning back to Lilly. “Look, don’t they have Chinese food in Montana? It’s good stuff, you have to trust me here.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Brad, do something about your child,” Fenny grumbled, giving up.

He looked at the menu for a moment before turning to whisper to Fenny. “Cashew chicken, that’s safe?”

“Safe as it gets.”

“How about cashew chicken, you’ll like that, it’s good,” he assured Lilly in a comforting tone.

“What’s cashew mean?”

“It’s a kind of nut.”

“Eeeww,” Lilly cringed dramatically.

“You don’t have to eat the nuts. I promise.”

“Fine,” Lilly huffed, folding her arms dramatically over her chest as Brad summoned a waiter and they ordered. In a matter of moments they had another waiter depositing a platter of appetizers, fried noodles and egg flower soup on their table. Brad stirred up Lilly’s soup for her, trying to cool it down a bit, and Lilly glared at it.

“What’s wrong now?” Fenny grumbled.

“What’s the icky stuff?” Lilly demanded with an upturned nose.

“It’s egg, just like fried eggs, only in soup.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You haven’t even tried it!”

“Just have some noodles,” Brad soothed and moved the bowl within her reach. Fenny grabbed her chopsticks and pulled a few fried noodles from the bowl, dipped them in the duck sauce and dropped them in her mouth.

“I want some of those,” Lilly declared. Brad obediently opened up a set of chopsticks and handed them to her.

“She’s gonna make a mess,” Fenny declared as she reached out to grab an egg roll. Lilly watched carefully and, with one chopstick in each hand, tried to pick up a sauce covered wonton, which she promptly dropped first on the tablecloth, then in her lap. She picked it up and placed it on her soup saucer before skewering it with one chopstick and raising it to her lips, where it promptly broke in two and fell back into her lap.

Brad took to trying to explain the workings of chop sticks to Lilly while Fenny searched her purse for a rubber band. With a few quick folds of her own chopstick wrapper, Fenny grabbed Lilly’s chopsticks from her hands, stoutly ignoring the whimpers Lilly gave in return, placed the paper between the sticks, wrapped the rubber band around the end and gave Lilly back a pair of spring-loaded trainee chopsticks.

“Look what I can do Daddy, I can use sticks like you,” Lilly called happily as she picked up half the wonton.

“That’s great,” Brad enthused. “Thanks Fen,” he said softer.

“Now we just sit back and hope she’ll eat what we ordered. Kids will eat raw squid if they can eat it with their first set of cheater chopsticks.”

“I have to eat a squid?” Lilly gasped, pausing as she pulled the lemon out of Fenny’s water glass with her chopsticks, dropping it into her cup of tea.

“Of course not honey, Fenny was making a joke,” Brad said.

“Doggy bags are looking really good right now,” Fenny mumbled as she picked the fruit and bits of pulp from her tea.

Greg stood up from the computer, clicked the “shut down” button and stretched his back before wandering to the bathroom to knock gently on the door. “Are you almost ready?”

“Almost,” she called through the door.

“What’s taking so long?”

“Prettying myself up for you,” she laughed.

“You don’t need to do that, you looked great when you went in there.”

“That’s sweet of you to say. Give me five more minutes.”

“Five minutes,” Greg sighed as he wandered off. “That’s what you said twenty minutes ago.”

“I heard that!” The bathroom door opened and closed quickly, her giggles retreating further into the room as the hand towel she’d thrown slid off his head.

“Oh, you’ll pay for that one missy,” he chuckled to himself. “Just you wait.”

“And this is the master bedroom, the light that comes in here in the morning is just fabulous with these gorgeous windows. The carpeting is brand new, just installed along with the Italian tiles I pointed out in the kitchen. There are of course lines for the telephone and cable television for this room, and it’s really very spacious with clean but comfortable lines. I’m sure you two could make this place a home in no time,” the realtor gushed.

“I like it,” Paul shrugged.

“I hate it,” Gina declared.

“Well it’s close to all—”

“Who asked you,” Gina snapped at the real estate agent.

“What’s wrong with it?” Paul asked.

“It’s too big, it’s too new, it’s just wrong, I don’t like it. Why, what do you find so great about the shit hole?”

“I’m just not that picky.”

“Yeah, that much is apparent.”

“What are you on about now, you totally fucking mental woman?” His head was beginning to throb again, and he didn’t know whether to blame the previous night’s drinking games, the persistent smell of new paint and carpet glue, or the fact that Gina still seemed to have an entire bamboo forest shoved up her arse.

“You’re such an idiot, Paul.”

“If I could just get you to look at this beautiful view,” the realtor tried, “I think you’ll find it’s quite—”

“Piss off, we’re trying to have an argument here,” Paul hissed and she quickly scampered away. “Would you please just tell me why you’re so angry at me?” he snapped, turning to Gina again.

“If you don’t know I’m not going to tell you,” they said simultaneously. Gina glared at him.

“Can I just apologize for whatever it is I’m supposed to know I’ve done but you won’t tell me so I can’t make a proper apology? It’d save us both a lot of time.”

“Let’s just get to the next place the smarmy agent thinks is the next Versaille,” Gina sighed and wandered through the house back out to the front yard where the estate agent was talking hurriedly into her cell phone.

“Go on to the next house,” she said softly, waving them off anxiously.

Gina made her way to her car, Paul following a few paces behind, and with a quick glance at the list of homes to see, she put an X through the address of the house they’d just left and headed for the next.

Paul crossed his arms across his chest and glared out the window at the passing buildings and bits of foliage. He couldn’t see why they were even bothering when Gina was in the mood she was in, there’d be no pleasing her. He’d thought they’d sorted the underwear problem, and then Gina invented some problem so that she could fight with him while he was helpless to defend himself against whatever it was he was supposed to have done. And while it was fun freaking out the realtor, they might as well go home and be frustrated with each other, at least he had beer and aspirin back at his apartment. Hell, she could go back to her apartment if she was going to be so bitchy all—wait. “I’ve figured it out,” he declared proudly.

“What?” Gina sighed.

“You’re mad because you think I don’t understand how important you think moving in together is.”

“What?”

“That’s the thing I’m supposed to know but you wouldn’t tell me. It’s not the hiding from ex-lovers, it’s moving in with current spouses. Of course I knew that, what do you think I am, stupid?”

“Do you want me to answer that question?”

“No, not really. That’s it though, right? What we’ve been arguing about through the last seven houses?”

“Well it took you long enough to figure it out,” Gina said, a hint of a smile playing on her face.

“I’ll get good at playing your little cryptic guessing game one day,” Paul shrugged. “And it’s not like I don’t want to move in with you. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here, I’d be back in our sullied bed sleeping off this hangover.”

“Well that’s good to hear because we’re living under the same roof whether you like it or not,” Gina smiled. “That way I can keep an eye on you and make sure any kinky underwear under the bed is mine.”

“You’ve got kinky underwear we can put under the bed?” Paul asked, eyes wide with excitement.

“Maybe,” Gina said innocently as she stopped the car. “If you’re good. Who’s that guy on the lawn with a clipboard?”

“Looks like the realtor had to call in reinforcements,” Paul mused.

“Well you did call her an anal retentive arse wipe,” Gina shrugged. “Which isn’t one of your best quite frankly. Two anal references.”

“I told you, I’m hungover,” Paul defended himself as they got out of the car and headed for the man in a the same cheap blazer as the last realtor. “And this guy’s just a wanker.”

“Hi, I’m Marcus, I’ll be showing you around,” he introduced himself. “Sorry that Lucille had to pull out at the last moment.”

“Too bad your dad wasn’t that smart,” Paul mused.

Marcus cocked his head and lead them towards the house.

“I hate it already,” Gina declared.

“I’m sorry about tonight,” Brad cooed as he came into the bedroom.

“Did you put her to sleep—I mean to bed?”

“Fen,” he groaned.

“Freudian slip, not my fault.” Fenny dropped her glasses on the nightstand and snuggled under the covers.

With a sigh, Brad stripped down to his boxers and slid behind her in bed, curling around her fetal form. “I’ll make it up to you, promise. We’ll get the neighbor kid to baby sit and we’ll go out for a nice long romantic dinner, just the two of us.” He dropped a few kisses on her shoulder and slid his hand over her hip to hold her closer. “After Vegas.”

The sigh of contentment that had been building in her escaped as a groan of frustration.

“Daddy,” a quiet voice peeped as the bedroom door opened, flooding them with light from the hall. “I can’t sleep.”

“You’ve only been trying for five minutes,” Fenny grumbled into the pillow as she buried her face in it.

“What’s wrong, princess?” Brad asked gently as he rolled onto his back to face Lilly.

The silhouette in the doorway shrugged. “Can I sleep with you, Daddy?”

“Come on in,” Brad offered, lifting up the covers as she gleefully scampered over.

“Brad…” Fenny began in a quietly menacing tone.

“The kid can’t sleep.”

“Well now neither can I.”

“I can hold you until you fall asleep too,” he said with a cheeky grin. “There’s enough of me to go around.”

“Sure there is,” Fenny huffed, slid out of bed and marched into the living room, heedless of Brad’s quiet protests. She flumped on the couch and turned on a lamp to find her sketchbook tucked carefully out of Lilly’s reach on top of the entertainment center. Resolutely ignoring the smeared remnants of a box of 16 Crayola crayons on her coffee table, Fenny was glad Lilly hadn’t been given a box of 96.

“Have to share my apartment, my furniture and my bed with that little monster,” Fenny mumbled to herself as she flipped to a clean page in her book. “We’re a family, like hell,” she sneered. “Not only that, I’ve got to act the quaint little homemaker and decorate the brat’s room.” With quick, harsh strokes she outlined the basic dimensions of Lilly’s bedroom with a ballpoint pen and began scribbling. “That’s where we can put the barbed wire mobile, maybe a tire swing of death…saw that one on Trading Spaces…nice mural of the seven levels of hell, she’ll feel right at home…”