By the time they brought their trays outdoors, a table was free. He grabbed it for them, set his tray down to mark ownership. Bunched up all the used yellow and green napkins on the table, dropped them in a nearby receptacle. Carried the previous occupants' two abandoned trays with smeared plates to the station where you stacked other people's dirty dishes.
Halfway through their sit down meal, people moving their hips past them, someone walking behind Joyce lowered her breasts against Joyce's back, tilting Joyce's shy face down into her salad.
"Oh my God! I am so sorry!"
Joyce lifted her face out of her salad, sliver of romaine lettuce on her nose.
"I am so sorry!"
Joyce swatted at her face, confused.
It was the waitress from the diner.
She shot a look at Pablo, but kept talking to Joyce. "I am so clumsy!" Sat down in a vacant chair next to Joyce. Reached into her purse. "Here, let me take care of that." Pulled out a handkerchief. Brought it up to her lips. Passed moisture from inside her mouth onto it. Held it out, looking at Joyce's nose. Had a thought. Sloppy, ingratiating grin. "Mind a little spit?"
Joyce sat back in her chair, still trying to figure out what was going on.
Sideways glance at Pablo that Joyce, in her confusion, wouldn't have noticed. The waitress wiped the wet spot on her handkerchief along Joyce's nose, cleaning. "There you go. Hold still, hon."
Joyce pulled her head back.
The waitress snaked a strong hand behind his wife's head, settling her fingers around her nape, forcing Joyce to submit to the nose wiping.
Sideways glance at Pablo, triumphant.
"There you go, sweetie. Just close your eyes and let me do my thing. Lift your head now so I can see."
Joyce lifted her head.
"Still got some dressing on your lips. Let Alicia take care of that for you."
Joyce's cheeks blushed a bright red. "Really, I think I can–"
Alicia reached forward, put her vertical finger against his wife's lips. Joyce's eyebrows rising at the intimacy. "Be quiet! Let me clean you up." Holding Joyce's eyes, Alicia spit into her white handkerchief again. "Stay still!" Joyce obediently held her face still. Alicia wiped her spit over Joyce's opening lips. "There you go, babe. That's my girl. You clean now, cupcake?"
His wife nodded solemnly.
Alicia reached over again, wiping her still-wet fingers over Joyce's tall white throat, pinching the throat, wiping, pinching. "You should probably give your hubby a kiss."
Joyce looked dazedly at Pablo.
Alicia's sideways glance at Pablo. She punched Joyce's upper arm. "Go for it, babe. Give your man some honey."
Joyce moved her face to Pablo's, self-conscious. Lips still glistening with the waitresses' spit.
Pablo accepted the kiss. Kissed back. His wife, but a different taste. The taste of the waitress. As if he were kissing the waitress, in front of his wife.
"You okay now, cupcake?"
Joyce blushed. "So what, I have a nickname now?" She couldn't think of anything else to say.
Alicia shook her dark hair away from her face, holding Joyce's eyes. "Sure do, babe. You're my little cupcake now!"
Joyce looked down at her salad, bashful but pleased. "Okay."
Pablo wanted to leave, but Alicia insisted they stay seated at that table, the three of them, so they could get to know each other better. Joyce, smitten, someone who had trouble making girlfriends, reached the point where she got annoyed at Pablo's starting to get up out of his chair, so he finally gave up, lit a cigarette, sat back, watched as the innocent Joyce was carefully charmed and stroked by the self-assured Alicia.
At one point, Alicia, hand resting on Joyce's bare forearm, asked if she could try what was left of Joyce's salad.
"Sure!"
The smaller woman reached out her fingers. Picked up a juicy crescent of ripe peach. You only get one of those with the Big Smile salad.
"Oh! I can tell by the look on your face you were saving that for yourself, for last."
Joyce, flustered. Shaking her head. "That's okay!"
Alicia brought the dripping crescent up to her lips. Raised her dark eyebrows. "Really, my little vanilla cupcake? You'll give me what you value most? Watch while I take it away from you? Enjoy watching me eat what's yours?"
Joyce shook her head, bangs messy. "Absolutely."
Alicia, fingers stuffing the juicy segment in her mouth, grinned sloppily. Holding Joyce's eyes.
His wife fluttered her eyelids. Sat up in her chair. Watching as yellow juices ran over those dark, compressing lips.
Pablo called his wife every day at one o'clock, walking away from the loud machine noises and angry curses of the garage where he worked, to check in. When he called that following Monday, it took a couple of rings before Joyce picked up.
"Everything OK?"
"Yeah! Having a great time."
"What's all that buzz in the background?" He'd call her at one because usually by then she had put her kindergarten students down for nap time.
"I'm in a restaurant."
"Why are you–" He caught himself. "You decided to go out for lunch?"
Her voice getting defensive. "Yeah! What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing. I'm just surprised. Are you–"
He heard muffling on her end. Her palm placed over the phone's speaker.
"Alicia says Hi!"
"What?"
"She showed up at my school. Said she was taking me out to lunch, to make up for knocking my face into the salad." She lowered her voice. But he could still hear the excitement in it. "I think I've found a new best friend."
Pablo lowered the phone away from his ear. Raised it back up. Trying to catch his breath. His boss was at the entrance to the garage, glaring at him, holding up his left wrist, looking at it.
"Honey, I gotta go. We'll talk tonight."
"About what? I'm having fun!"
"I know. I love you."
Hurt voice. "I don't understand why you're upset. This is a good thing."
He started walking back towards his angry boss. "I love you."
"Well, I love you, too. Gee, I thought you'd be happy."
She was a little distant when his key let him into their apartment. Usually, she gave him a happy hug, their 'home again' hug as they called it, but her lack of enthusiasm this hug was obviously one of those wordless statements women use.
He had to pop his own beer. "May I talk to you?"
She was back in their kitchen, staring out the window over the sink. Gave him a diffident look. "About what?"
"Please sit down."
Sat holding onto her own dark bottle of beer. He always thought she looked odd holding a beer bottle. Didn't really seem like a beer drinker. Any kind of drinker.
"Alicia? The woman you had lunch with today? The woman who mashed your face into the salad Saturday?"
"She didn't ‘mash' my face into the salad."
He didn't want to be distracted from the script he had rehearsed. "I met her about a week earlier."
Waited for her reaction. Watched as she took a sip of her beer. Lowered the bottle from her lips. "I know. She told me." Such an innocent face.
"She told you?"
"At lunch. She said she was wracking her brain, because you looked so familiar to her. Then she realized, Oh yeah, you were one of her customers."
He tried to adjust to what she had just said. "What did she tell you?"
Joyce shrugged. "What I just said."
"Hon, when I went into that diner, she was very flirtatious with me."
"I know. She told me!" Big grin. "She said she thinks she scared you off. She was telling me what it's like to be a waitress, how you have to flirt with all the male customers, or they'll fire you. I knew it wasn't an easy life, being a food server, but she told me some really hair-raising stories. One time a guy tried to pull her into a men's room, to rape her." Her eyes teared up, at how her new best friend had been mistreated.
&
nbsp; "Joyce, listen. She invited me back to her apartment." He felt foolish about it, but added, "For sex."
"Pablo, I know! She was completely honest with me. She told me all that."
"She did?"
"Yeah! She said she was attracted to you. But she said once she found out we were a couple, that was it. She immediately saw you in a different light. Because now, you weren't just some stranger in a restaurant, you were her best friend's husband." Joyce beamed. "She said that. That we were best friends."
Pablo shook his head. "I don't trust her."
"Well, you don't know her like I do."
"Do you really know her? When she was cleaning your face Saturday, she was shooting me all these secret looks."
Joyce stared at him a moment across their little kitchen table. Her blue eyes started to glisten. "Why are you doing this? Why can't I have a friend?"
What do you do?
His wife was clearly getting upset. Getting that lonely look back in her eyes. The look that only partially went away once he got out.
"Maybe I was wrong. I'm just trying to protect you."
Another swig from her bottle. "Who was there to protect me the eighteen months you were in?" Bitterness.
He felt scared. "I was wrong. I overreacted. I'm sorry."
Joyce, relieved, reached across the small tabletop, squeezed the top of his hand. Another swig, but this time happier. Pulled the bottle away from her lips. "I invited her over to our apartment this Friday. For dinner. She was thrilled."
Pablo twisted his head on his neck. "Okay!"
Joyce asked him to make his Shrimp Etouffee for Friday's party, the dish of his she probably liked the most. That helped, because he'd be in the kitchen part of the evening, and wouldn't have to interact with Alicia. Just before Alicia was supposed to arrive, Joyce strolled out into the living room, wearing a pair of tight blue jeans and the pink and green blouse she had been pressured to purchase at that woman's store. Which surprised him. Usually she didn't wear the clothes she had been bullied into buying.
He was running the frozen shrimp under the tap in the kitchen, defrosting them so he could shell and devein them, when the front doorbell of their apartment rang.
"Could you get it?"
Pablo dried his hands on some paper towels. Turned off the tap. Left the shrimp in the sink. "Okay."
"Be enthusiastic!"
He walked over in his white shirt to their front door, sleeves rolled up over his muscular forearms for deveining the shrimp, Joyce trailing behind, touching her hair.
Looked through the peephole. There she was, fisheye face floating in the common hallway.
Unlocked the door. Swung it inwards.
Alicia bent her upper body sideways around Pablo's bulk to wiggle her fingers at Joyce. Looked up at his eyes. "Do you remember me? From the diner?"
He stepped back. "Come in."
She brought her hands to her hips. "Am I invited by you to come into your home?"
He stepped further back, hiding his annoyance. "Yeah! Come in. Welcome to our home."
She reared her pretty face back on her slender neck, eyes going up and down the nervous Joyce. "Look at you! Where'd you get that blouse?"
His wife blushed. Spread her hands apart at her hips, posing at a beauty contest. "It's just something I had in my closet."
"Well, I have to raid your closet!" Alicia lifted her bare arms. "Come here, my little vanilla cupcake."
Joyce went eagerly into her arms, returning the hug as Alicia stared coldly over Joyce's taller shoulder at Pablo. Kissed the side of Joyce's neck. Pulled her happy face back. "Well, looking at you in that blouse, I feel outgunned. Poor me, I just threw on a white undershirt!"
She was wearing a form-hugging ribbed top, narrow straps, no bra. Nice breasts, but smaller than Joyce's. Not that Alicia had nice breasts, just that they were smaller than his wife's breasts.
"Well, I'm going to get our dinner ready. It'll take a while."
"No rush! We've got all night. Joyce and me will just have some girl talk and a couple of drinks while you slave at the stove."
While he deveined the shrimp in the kitchen he kept the tap on low, hoping to hear some of the conversation behind his back in the living room. Mostly giggles and whispers. Alicia seemed to dominate.
After he put the prepared shrimp on ice in the refrigerator, he measured out spices, cut up the onion, green bell pepper, celery and garlic that went into the dish. Next step was to start the roux, which would take about half an hour, stirring flour around in hot oil until it got the color of mud, a step that couldn't be interrupted. So before he began the roux, which would trap him at the stove, he decided to check on them.
Sitting side by side on the living room carpet, backs to the sofa's seat cushions. Joyce looked up at his entrance. Her eyes were red. Thump in his stomach.
Before he could figure out what to say, she made a weak gesture at Alicia. "She's lived a hard life."
"Yeah?"
Alicia looked up into his eyes. "Guys don't understand. Only girls do."
Big man standing in his living room, arms hanging down by his sides, blue prison tats on his forearms, looking down at this dangerous little girl. "Joyce mentioned you were almost raped by one of your customers?"
No response from Alicia.
"He tried to force you into the men's room or something?"
Joyce stared down at the carpet, mortified.
"Well, I guess I'll go back to the kitchen, cook the rest of our meal."
Once everything was in the skillet, just needing a few swirls of butter to finish it, he went back out to the living room, to let them know it was time to move to the dining room table.
They were sitting on the sofa, a tearful Joyce in Alicia's bare arms, the shorter woman stroking his wife's blonde hair, playing with her bangs. "Are you my little vanilla cupcake? Are you?"
His wife nodding emphatically.
"What's going on?"
Alicia pinched Joyce's throat. "She's getting a lot of toxins out of her system."
"Honey? You okay?"
Joyce burst into tears. "I've needed someone to talk to. A woman. To tell her about what I've been through, with you in prison."
He felt shame, like he always did. After a while, there's so much for which a man can feel shame. Especially a man who isn't bad.
Alicia smiled at him, holding his wife's head in her lap. "This is a healing process for her. This is when she's finally allowed to let all that pain out, and feel weak."
Pablo standing big and dumb, feeling awkward in his own living room. Wanting to be the one holding his crying wife, not Alicia, really missing that intimacy they once had, not knowing, in this setting, how to make that happen, only knowing that Alicia had better social skills than him, and if he tried to get Joyce to cry on his lap, it wouldn't work.
In the meantime, he did know his dish had been cooking too long. What else could he say? "Do the two of you want to eat?"
Realized his mistake. Shouldn't have said 'the two of you.' Made it sound like they were the couple, and he was the one on the outside.
Alicia eventually coaxed Joyce into the dining room. Pulled Joyce's chair sideways so she could hold Joyce's hand in her lap.
He put a mound of fragrant white rice on each white plate, topped the mound with big spoonfuls of the rich, brown sauce, tumbling with fat curves of shrimp.
Joyce stared down at her plate, forgotten fork in her right hand. Alicia tried a speared shrimp. Made a face. "Little tough."
"Well, they sat in the hot sauce a little longer than I intended."
Joyce ended up eating very little. A disappointment to him. She had asked him to make this meal, and in the past they had really enjoyed it together. Happy times.
After dinner, while he slid most of their two plates down the garbage disposal, Alicia and Joyce retired to the living room.
Pablo joined them.
Alicia had her hip right up against Joyce on the sofa, leaving no room for
him, so he had to sit in the far away island of the easy chair.
He cleared his throat. Spoke to his wife, trying to ignore Alicia. "You know, I'll forever regret what I did to you, robbing that stupid bar, putting you in a position where you had to live by yourself, and fend for yourself, for eighteen months. I'll never do something that stupid ever again."
She swung her teary face left, right. "You have no idea! None! The shame? With my family? My friends? I'm supposed to be smart, I'm supposed to be the sensible one, but I wind up with a husband who's in goddamn prison? And how about with new people I meet, Pablo? Are you married? What does your husband do? Oh, he's not rising up the ranks in some company. He's in prison!"
He hung his head. Talked to his shoes. "Biggest fucking blunder of my life. I was so stupid. But you know, just like you were going through a terrible time, I was going through a terrible time too. A lot happens in prison. Stuff I don't ever want to discuss with you, because I don't want to bring that ugliness into our marriage. But a lot went on while I was locked up for eighteen months, and I have to deal with that." Kept talking, but drew into himself, that fortress he had found, in that year and a half inside. "What I eventually did, in there. What I didn't do."
Alicia put her bare arm around Joyce's shoulders. "You look tense. Are you tense? Let me show you how to get rid of a lot of that tension."
Joyce swung her red-nosed face to Alicia.
The shorter woman stood up off the sofa. Reached down for both of Joyce's hands, as if they were reins. "Up we go, little cupcake. Now I want you to lie down on your back on the carpet."
Joyce, uncertain.
But she got down on her knees in front of Alicia, then awkwardly, left hand searching behind her to find the carpet, lowered herself all the way down onto her back.
Pablo stood up out of his chair. "What is this about?"
Alicia smiled at him. Sat down on his wife's rib cage, one leg on either side, straddling. Looked down. "I'm going to unbutton your blouse now, and take it off." Her fingers pulled the bottom of Joyce's blouse out of her blue jeans' waistband. Unbuttoned the bottom button.
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