“You told her about that?” he said.
“It was funny,” I said, but we both knew he hadn’t thought so.
Laura must have realized that she’d inadvertently steered the conversation in the wrong direction because she tried to backpedal as fast as she could. “Eileen said he was a real jerk.”
I hadn’t said that or anything close, but I appreciated what she was trying to do.
“Like, who says something about a guy’s wife right in front of him?”
“Someone’s got to fill me in,” said Bobby, so Laura gave him her version of events.
“It’s not that big a deal,” I said.
“Let us be the judge,” Bobby said before turning to Paul. “Seriously, man, what’d he say?”
Paul looked miserable, stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“You can tell us,” said Laura.
I couldn’t look at Paul, so I studied the mug of wine in my hand.
Paul exhaled. “He said, ‘You can have it any way you want.’?”
I glanced up at him. “Really?”
“Yup.”
“Wait, so he was saying it to Teo?” said Bobby.
“About Eileen,” Paul said.
“I don’t get it,” said Laura.
I did. And the whole thing made me want to die. “Can we talk about something else?” I asked, but there was no getting off this topic until we’d closed the loop.
Bobby turned to Laura and explained what Afonso meant. “He was insinuating that Eileen was into Teo and would do whatever he wanted. Sexually.”
“Oh…” said Laura, then shot me a confused look. “But you said he’s not even cute.”
Paul looked at me. “You said that?”
“We were just talking.”
Paul was clearly annoyed, so Laura jumped in to try to make things right. “Mostly, we were talking about how much she likes your you-know-what.”
This sent us all reeling, and then Bobby repeated it in a voice that wasn’t Laura’s but was, rather, a cross between Queen Elizabeth’s and Olivia Newton-John’s. “She likes your you-know-what.”
Soon we were all impersonating Laura, and the evening was back on track. She was a good sport and put up with more ribbing than she deserved. When there was a natural break in the conversation, she deftly turned the spotlight on Paul and me. “I want to know how you two met,” she said, and popped an olive into her mouth.
I let Paul tell the story, which was entertaining because I’d never heard it from his perspective. “Right away, I could tell she was really digging me,” he said with a sly smile, then reached over and pinched my breast.
“I’m sorry he’s such an animal,” I said, and everyone laughed, but there was a part of me that wondered how what Paul had just done in front of our friends was any better than the comment Afonso had made in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know.
68.
WHEN I WALKED BACK INSIDEthe house after waving Laura and Bobby off, Paul was standing at the kitchen sink, washing dishes. “There’s no hot water,” he said in the matter-of-fact tone of a man who believes the world is out to get him.
“We’ve got to turn on the water heater. Fifteen minutes beforehand. Remember?”
