Chapter 77
THE AUGUST CAWS MEETING was at Mary Lou’s house, and all anyone could talk about was the Gilmore’s upcoming cruise.
Once a quarter, the tender went to sea for ten days so the crew could run through a series of training exercises—the type of stuff they’d have to do if the U.S.
ever went to war and the tender needed to resupply or repair subs on the open sea.
Since these cruises were so short and there was no real risk that anything would go wrong, the wives tended to see them not as a hardship but as a gift.
“I’m not going to cook once the whole time Tim’s gone,” said Bev, and everyone nodded appreciatively.
What made this cruise doubly exciting for women like Bev and Mary Lou, whose son, Chris, was home from Spain for the summer, was that it was a “tiger cruise.” This meant that boys age eight and over were allowed to accompany their fathers on the trip.
The boys were assigned berths and given odd jobs to do while the ship was underway, but from the sound of things, they mostly ran wild while their fathers ignored them.
The wives seemed to accept this, even while they bemoaned the fact that their kids were unlikely to brush their teeth for the better part of a fortnight.
“I told Steve that when they make their port call in Rota, there are to be no titty bars,” said Carla, who was back with her big black bag of books. “Kevin’s only ten.”
Many of the women gave Carla a sympathetic shrug, like this was both a perfectly reasonable request and impossible to enforce.
Rita chimed in: “They don’t have to go to titty bars to see titties.
J.R. told me that the last time they pulled into Rota, there were topless women on speedboats waving ads for brothels above their heads. ”
“Don’t tell us that,” said Bev.
Mary Lou had had enough and pulled out the phone tree so she could run through everyone’s updated assignments.
Now that I’d moved into the house on the Via don Vico, I’d been plugged in with some of the other women who lived on the western side of the island.
Barb Norris was my point person, and my job was to pass any messages along to Annie Campbell, a new girl who was married to a crane operator and lived at Il Paradiso.
Mary Lou gave me Annie’s apartment number, and I wrote it down in my address book.
When we were done sorting out the phone tree, Rita passed around a sign-up sheet for a potluck that she and Mary Lou were organizing at the compound, and another gal announced she was going to host a movie night in the courtyard of her apartment building.
One of the wives, who was maybe a little younger than I was, said she’d been dying to check out some dance club in Porto Cervo and wanted to know who was up for going in on a room at Hotel Cala di Volpe.
“If we sleep three to a bed, we can almost afford it,” she said, and everyone in the room laughed.
This girl’s husband was enlisted, so I knew I couldn’t go, but she had no shortage of takers among the other enlisted wives.
Laura had been unnaturally quiet, and when I saw her going through the books Carla had laid out on a table on the veranda, I went outside and tried to break the ice.
“Have you read this one?” I asked, tapping the cover of a tattered Harlequin romance called The Tartan Touch.
She shook her head.
“I borrowed it last time. It’s got this Scottish girl who’s plunked down in the middle of the Australian Outback, and there’s a really steamy situation with a stockman…”
She smiled, maybe in spite of herself, picked up the book, and acted like she was reading the first page. Finally, she turned to me. “Who were you with the other night?”
“What?”
“I saw you at Feast Day. With some guy.”
There was a chance—albeit a remote one—that she was talking about Bernardo. “Maybe Francesca’s husband?” I said, playing dumb. “I went with them.”
“No,” she said, flatly. “This was a young guy. Kind of skinny, with glasses.”
“Oh,” I said, acting like Teo’s name wasn’t on the tip of my tongue. “You’re talking about Francesca’s nephew?”
“Wait,” she said. “That was Teo? The guy from the bar?”
I knew I couldn’t be cagey about it; that would only make things worse. “Yeah, that was him. We were there with Francesca and her husband.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Well, I didn’t see anyone else with you.”
There was an insinuation there, but I ignored it. “It was a madhouse, wasn’t it?”
She was clearly turning something over in her head, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what it was. “I thought you said he wasn’t cute,” she said at last.
I blinked. “You think he is?”
“I mean, he’s short. And a little on the scrawny side. But he’s attractive. I definitely wouldn’t have called him ugly.”
“Did I call him ugly?”
She crossed her arms. “Basically.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said, vaguely. “I really don’t think about him like that.”
“It looked like you were thinking about him like that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It just looked like you two were on a date.”
“Jesus, Laura,” I said in a sharp voice that I hoped came off as offended and not defensive. “I’m married.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I was confused.”
I had to save this, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. For a few minutes we perused the books in silence, until finally I said, “What if we hosted our own thing for the wives while the tender’s gone?”
“You and me?”
“Yeah, like a brunch or a night out.”
Her face was expressionless, but then—all of a sudden—it brightened. “What about a bingo night?”
I hated bingo, but if she was excited about it, I was in. “Do you think we could get our hands on some cards?”
“MWR might have some we can borrow. But if not, we can make our own.”
We spent the next quarter of an hour plotting La Maddalena’s first and likely only bingo night, which we’d decided we would hold at the compound’s picnic shelter. When we had the details all worked out, we went back inside and got everyone’s attention.
“Mark your calendars, ladies!” said Laura. “Because you are in for a treat.”