Chapter 67
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON and I had just begun to tackle the bedroom when I heard a car pull up out front.
I assumed it was Giovanni’s niece, who was already living next door and whom I’d been hoping to catch at home so I could introduce myself.
But when I went to the door, I was pleasantly surprised to find Laura and Bobby making their way up the steps.
“The Carpenters are here,” I called to Paul, then met them out on the house’s tiny front porch. “Benvenuti a casa nostra!”
“We figured we’d come see how the new place was treating you,” said Laura as she hugged me hello. “Oh, and we brought wine.”
They had brought two bottles of Vermentino, but there was also a bag of gourmet treats.
A block of hard cheese, a jar of olives, a package of mortadella, and these paper-thin crackers called pane carasau, which I would later learn were sometimes called carte da musica because they made so much noise when you ate them.
“Do we have a bottle opener?” Paul asked me after he’d greeted them both, and I panicked, positive that we did not.
“I thought this might be a problem,” said Laura, and from the depths of her purse she retrieved a corkscrew.
“You are a genius,” I said, and Paul did the honors, opening the bottle and pouring the wine into four coffee mugs, which were the only beverage receptacles we owned.
“I thought you weren’t drinking?” I said to Laura in a hushed voice while she arranged the rest of the goodies on a plate.
“I got my period two days ago.”
“Oh, no,” I said sympathetically, but she waved me away and held up the plate for all to see.
“Will you look at this thing?”
We agreed that she had put together quite a spread, then I led everyone through our messy bedroom and out to the garden where Giovanni had—thank God—left behind a small table and chairs.
“There’s a cat here somewhere,” I said as we took our seats. “I’m hoping he smells the mortadella and comes out of hiding.”
Laura placed the plate in the middle of the table, and Bobby raised a mug in our direction. “To your new home.”
“I read somewhere that in Italy, when you toast, you’re meant to make eye contact with each person at the table,” said Laura. “Then you say cin cin.”
“Not salute?” I asked.
“It’s too formal,” said Paul. “Remember, we’re friends.”
“Ugh, that’s right,” said Laura. “You’re married to someone who actually knows Italian. Does he walk around correcting you all the time?”
“Never,” said Paul.
I gave him a look.
“Okay, maybe sometimes.”
“I think we’d kill each other if he was my actual Italian teacher.”
“Too exacting?” said Bobby.
“Too impatient,” I said.
“Speaking of your superb Italian skills, Lieutenant Archer,” said Laura, “are you really not going to tell us what that guy said to Eileen at the bar?”
I glanced at Paul.
“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.