Chapter 64
A WEEK LATER, we got the good news that Paul’s Chevelle had arrived in Olbia and was ready to be picked up.
Our instructions were to take the ferry to Palau, a bus to Olbia, and a taxi to the port office, where—God willing—the car would be waiting for us, no worse for wear.
We were so desperate to get behind the wheel, to be able to go where we wanted, that if the NSO’s Motor Vehicles Office had told us we needed to skip rope all the way to the port office, we would have done so, gladly.
Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. When Bobby heard that Paul was planning to take Friday afternoon off to go pick up the car, he offered to give him a ride—on the condition that they stop in Porto Cervo on the way home to play a round of golf at the Cervo Golf and Tennis Club, which accepted vouchers they could buy for pennies on the dollar at the NSO Tour Office.
Porto Cervo sounded fun and I asked if I could tag along, but Paul convinced me I’d be bored. “Do you know how long it takes to play eighteen holes?” he asked as he shined his shoes that morning.
Thankfully, Laura called me at the hotel, soon after Paul’s departure, and said, with no preamble, “Let’s go get drunk.”
So, that’s what we did.
We bounced around to a few different places, but ended the night at Club 56, a tiny cavern of a bar that sat in the shadow of the church. “This might be the last time I do this,” said Laura as she held a glass of white wine up to the light.
“Why?” I asked.
“Don’t tell Bobby I told you, but he said we can try.”
I was a little slow on the uptake, probably on account of all the wine. “For what?”
“A baby, dummy.”
“Oh,” I said, “that’s great! Congratulazioni!”
She gave me a wide grin, and we clinked glasses, but she didn’t drink from hers, just put it back down on the table.
“Wait, you’re not pregnant now, are you?” I was confused, since she’d been drinking like a fish all night.
“No, no,” said Laura. “Not yet. We’re just working on it.” She stifled a nervous laugh. Laura was twenty-six that spring, only two years older than I was, but she seemed so much wiser and more experienced—on every front.
“Did it take you long to get pregnant… before?” I asked.
“About six months.”
“That seems like a lot.”
“It felt like it. At the time. Though, in hindsight, it wasn’t that bad.”
“Just a lot of sex, I guess?”
Laura laughed at that, maybe surprised I’d said the word sex aloud. “Yeah, but it’s funny how quickly it can begin to feel like a chore.”
I must have nodded in agreement or understanding or something, because she immediately narrowed her eyes at me. “What would you know about sex being a chore? You’ve been married for two seconds.”
I pretended to be offended. “Two months, actually.”
She rolled her eyes. “Same thing.”
I took a sip of wine.
“You guys are probably having sex constantly,” she said, in a too-loud voice.
“Shhh,” I whispered, looking around at the other—mostly empty—tables.
“I’m right, though?”
“Yes,” I said, but the acknowledgment came out sounding stiff, like I didn’t really mean it.
“But?”
“No buts,” I said. “It’s good, I think.”
“You think?” She said the word think like it had three syllables, which was a pretty decent indication she was wasted.
I thought of the last time Paul and I had had sex, which had been the night of Tom Mueller’s going-away party.
After we’d gotten back to the hotel, he had ordered me to take off all my clothes.
It sounds bad when I say it like that, but that’s essentially what happened.
I stripped while he stroked himself, then he pushed me against the wardrobe—not indelicately—and entered me from behind.
It was fine, but none of it was about me.
What it was about was Afonso’s comment and maybe the way Teo’s eyes had lingered on me when I’d said goodbye.
“We have a lot of sex, but…”
“I know what you’re going to say,” said Laura.
“What?”
“He’s not making you you-know?”
I looked around, just to be sure no one was within earshot, then shook my head.
“That’s okay,” Laura said. “It’s normal, even.”
I took a large swallow of wine.
“Were you with anyone else? Before Paul?”
I could feel my cheeks going warm. “A couple of guys.”
“And nothing with them, either?”
“No,” I said, cringing a little.
“That’s okay, that’s okay.”
“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
“Of course not,” said Laura. “It takes time to figure this stuff out.”
I nodded like I knew that, then drained the wine in my glass.
Laura scraped at a fleck of paint on the table with her fingernail. “Do you… you know?”
“What?” I said.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Masturbate?”
“No!” I said, horrified. There was a limit to what I could tell Laura, even with everything else out in the open.
Laura feigned confusion. “What?”
“It’s mortifying.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “Everyone does it.”
“I never did. Until recently.”
“Okay, so you are? That’s great. I’d keep doing that.”
“You don’t think it’s like, maybe, a distraction?”
“No way,” she said, adamantly. “It’s like how submariners have to go to Nuclear Prototype School before they’re allowed to work on a real reactor.”
“Am I the prototype or the reactor?”
“It’s not a perfect analogy,” she said with a laugh. “All I’m saying is that having good sex is important, and if you figure out what you like, you’ll be in a better position to ask Paul to give it to you.”
She made it sound so simple. Even the phrase ask Paul to give it to you implied a level of maturity and understanding that I wasn’t sure either of us possessed.
I told Laura what had happened at Bar Fiume.
It was a dumb idea, in hindsight, but I felt close to her that night, and I think I wanted her to tell me that Paul had overreacted, or that it was normal to get married and still be attracted to other people.
I might have just wanted an excuse to say Teo’s name out loud.
In any case, the version of the story I gave her was edited.
I skipped a lot of the eye contact and also the part where he’d lit my cigarette.
“So, this guy Teo? Is he cute?” Laura asked when I was finished.
“Not really,” I said, but this was not exactly true.
Teo was a different kind of cute than Paul.
Sort of delicate, with high cheekbones, a thin nose, and a dramatic Cupid’s bow that most girls would have killed for.
I couldn’t very well admit that I’d noticed any of these attributes, so I went with the more obvious stuff and nipped the whole conversation in the bud.
“He’s skinny and not that tall. Kind of bookish. ”
“Well, then, what’s Paul worried about?” said Laura. “He’s got the goods, and once he figures out how to get you off, he’s going to be in a league of his own.”
At that, we dissolved into peals of laughter.
When I’d recovered, I said, “What do you think the boys are talking about? Over at the club?”
Laura gestured at the space between us, like our words were still hanging in the air. “Definitely not this.”