Big Swiss(70)

“Pi?on,” Luke said slowly. “Your husband?”

Greta looked sideways at Big Swiss. Did you tell him I’m married? To a man named Pi?on?

“Pi?on is her child,” Big Swiss said. “Except he’s a dog.”

He’s my inner child, Greta thought, which is why he growls at you.

“Oh right,” Luke said, and shook his head. “Pi?on, the Jack Russell. Of course. Flavia tells me they get along great. Which is a relief. Silas doesn’t have many friends.”

“Oh, they’re more than friends,” Greta said, and winked.

“How’s that?” Luke asked innocently.

“Silas has huge balls,” Greta said. “As you know. But he also smells male, which engenders a lot of same-sex aggression and obsession.”

Sort of like how your wife’s smell affects me.

“What does it engender in the opposite sex?” Luke asked.

“Fear,” Greta said.

Luke nodded.

“Have you thought about having him snipped?” Greta asked. “It’s not too late. Pi?on was neutered at age six.”

Luke shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Big Swiss seemed far away, likely lost in a fantasy of having Greta snipped, or doing it herself.

“I prefer to leave him intact,” Luke said. “I don’t think neutering is really necessary for males.”

Blow jobs aren’t necessary, either, Greta thought, but I bet you couldn’t live without ’em, am I right?

“I imagine he wanders off a lot, though,” Greta said. “On the prowl for poon.”

“I’m not anthropomorphizing,” Luke offered strangely. “I guess I’m just reluctant to do something irreversible when there’s little evidence that it does anything good.”

“Well, friends are good,” Greta said, and raised her glass. “To new friends.”

“To new friends,” Luke repeated, raising his.

“Cheers,” Big Swiss said cheerlessly.

They passed around the salad, along with an assortment of dried meats and various breads, including nut and fruit. In the pot, five mountain cheeses, three glasses of wine, two shots of kirsch, some garlic. Greta and Luke dunked lightly, almost playfully, but Big Swiss dragged hers along the bottom, drowning the life out of it before plopping it onto her plate, where it rested briefly before traveling to her beautiful mouth. Rather than devour it in one bite, Big Swiss nibbled off the fork—flirtatiously, it seemed to Greta. Sure enough, Big Swiss and Luke exchanged one or two private smiles.

Where’s my private smile? Greta wondered. “You’re supposed to flirt with the other woman,” she imagined lecturing Big Swiss tomorrow, “not your boring husband.” But then she remembered that she wasn’t in fact the other woman. The other woman would be sleeping with Luke. Greta was the gay lover.

The gay lover was painfully full five minutes later. So was Luke, it appeared, who kept pushing food around on his plate. Like the child of an alcoholic. Greta counted his drinks—five beers, fifty minutes—and thought of various ways to rescue him. But why, when he was clearly very wealthy? She never pitied the rich. And he could easily defend himself. In fact, he looked like he could jiu-jitsu Greta’s face off if he wanted. Was he flexing his forearms?

He was twitching, she decided. He was tactile defensive! Some texture or other must’ve been bothering him. He was certainly holding his fork funny. He had trouble brushing his hair, Greta remembered Big Swiss saying, but his hair looked fine, a little unctuous, maybe, and she wondered if the culprit was coconut oil, and whether he spent as much time as Greta slathering it all over himself, slathering it all over his wife, getting it all over the sheets, tracking it to the bathroom, spitting it out in the sink, washing it off in the shower but never quite getting it out of his hair, and whether he could even glance at a coconut without thinking of pussy. But that was Greta’s life. Perhaps Luke’s life was coconut-free, or, who knows, maybe he was anti-coconut, because of all the monkey labor, those poor pigtailed macaques in Southeast Asia, forced to harvest coconuts on farms for the last four hundred years.

“?Habla más de un idioma?” Luke said in a low voice.

“Por supuesto no,” Big Swiss said.

“Que te pasa, cari?o,” Luke said. “Estás actuando rara.”

“Ninguna cosa,” Big Swiss said, and shook her head. “Te diré después.”

Was she having an auditory hallucination, or were they really speaking Spanish?

“Hola,” Greta chimed in. “Feliz Navidad.”

Luke looked embarrassed. “Gosh, I’m sorry. We don’t mean to be rude. We’re just practicing.”

“For what?” Greta said.

“Fun,” Big Swiss said quickly.

“Ecuador,” Luke said.

“Oh?” Greta coughed.

“Did you tell her, Flav?” Luke said.

Big Swiss shook her head without looking at Greta.

“We’re going to this fancy eco-resort for our anniversary,” Luke said. “We’ll be there two weeks—maybe longer. We’ll see. But we haven’t been to South America in five years, so we’re a little rusty.”

“Me neither,” said Greta, who’d never been south of Tijuana.