Chapter 50
YOU’D HAVE THOUGHT PAUL had won the lottery the day he came home from work and announced that we’d been invited to Jim and Mary Lou Jenkins’s house for dinner.
The invitation didn’t thrill me quite the way it did him, but like Paul, I was also beginning to feel the hotel’s walls closing in, so I picked out a dress and asked what we should bring.
The Jenkinses lived in a house on the Via Trinità, past the hospital, on the way out of town. It was walkable but not in good shoes, so I decided to wear my Keds and toss a pair of heels in my bag. Paul’s job was to carry the wine, which I’d bought at a cute little shop on the Via Italia.
We’d known the uphill walk was going to be a bear, but it was worse than we’d anticipated, and by the time we arrived in front of the house, we were drenched in sweat and several minutes late.
I hurried to slip off my Keds, but when I went to remove the heels from my bag, I realized they weren’t there.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, more to myself than to Paul.
“What?”
“I don’t have my shoes.” I could feel a drop of sweat trace a line down my back. “Should I go back?”
“Now?”
We were already late, and it didn’t make sense to turn around, but I hadn’t processed any of that when I heard a familiar voice calling to us from a passing car. “Our wheels arrived!”
It was Laura, hanging out the window of a sky-blue Volkswagen Bug. “We’re just turning around,” she shouted. “Wait for us!”
“Great!” I said, then turned to Paul in a panic. “What do I do?”
He sighed. “Put your Keds back on, I guess.”
By the time Laura and Bobby joined us, I had finished tying the laces. Laura was wearing a red pinafore dress and a pair of patent-leather Mary Janes, the kind with the platform heel, which made her legs look a mile long. “You look great,” I told her.
“And you look… sporty.”
I explained my mistake, assuming she’d tell me it was no big deal.
“That’s terrible,” she said, and I got the impression that she really did think so.
“If we’d known you were coming,” said Bobby, “we could have given you a ride.”
“Not helpful, Bobby,” said Laura, and we all laughed it off as we made our way up to the front door.
Mary Lou flung open the door before any of us had a chance to knock. “You made it,” she said, then pulled Laura and me in for something bordering on a hug. Once she released us, she assessed our outfits, and while she didn’t say anything about my shoes, I could feel her take them in.
She introduced herself to Paul and Bobby; then Jim Jenkins, who had been mixing himself a drink at a makeshift bar in the foyer, stepped forward and introduced himself to Laura and me.
He was trim and tan, with salt-and-pepper sideburns and a firm handshake—almost exactly whom I’d pictured for Mary Lou.
Once Paul handed over the wine, we were ushered into the living room, where several other couples were already milling about.
The names washed over me, but I soon realized that everyone worked in the Repair Department and reported up through Joe Stearns, who was in attendance, alongside his wife, Roberta.
Stearns reported directly to the XO, Tony Visconti, whom I had not met; he apparently had not been able to make it.
Laura leaned in and whispered, “Bobby says they rotate these dinners.”
“Rotate?”
“Like they’ll have all the Repair officers, then the next time it’ll be Supply. Or Engineering. Or what have you. Mary Lou doesn’t want anyone to feel left out.”
I eyed Mary Lou, who was making her way around the room with a tray of rumaki. “That sounds exhausting.”
“I wonder if the Greers are coming,” said Laura, and just then there was another knock at the door, and in walked Janine Greer with Daniel and Angela Bornemann.
“Shit,” I said under my breath.
Laura rested a hand on my arm. “She’ll be fine. She said her piece. You said yours. It’s over.”
Janine made her apologies for the commodore’s absence, and Angela handed Mary Lou a bottle of mirto, and we did another round of introductions. By the time Angela got around to greeting Laura and me, I had a million-watt smile ready to go. “So good to see you again,” I said.
“Likewise,” said Angela and, because she apparently preferred to have the upper hand at all times, she told me that she’d met Paul at a luncheon on the tender.
“He says you’re taking Italian lessons,” she said, and I felt my heart rate skyrocket.
What could I say? That I disliked Angela so intensely I had foregone her (free) language lessons and was instead paying great sums of money to a woman who might be a communist and was most definitely put out by the U.S.
Navy, everyone on the Gilmore, and maybe even me personally?
“I have the attention span of a gnat,” I said finally. “So I thought I might do better with private lessons.” This was, of course, not true, and as if to call me on it, Angela made a disbelieving gurgle in the back of her throat.