Page 44 of The Pairing

It’s all soeasyfor him. Leaving me for a shiny new life, kissing sexy fishmongers and abandoning me to be cockblocked by my own unresolved feelings. Even when we were together, I could see the vines of potential spiraling out of him, reaching for taller trellises in bigger fields. He gets everything he ever dreamed of, and I’m where I’ve always been, one step behind.

It would be such a relief to create a problem for him, even a small one.

Fabrizio drops off a plate of croquetas and compliments Birgitte’s blouse, and when he saunters off, Birgitte says, “Den där Fabrizio, he is like a painting we have in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.”

“Which one?” Kit asks.

“I think I know,” says her bespectacled husband, Lars. With the jolly mischief of a man wearing a straw fedora indoors, Lars pulls up something on his phone and shows it to his wife.

“Ja! This is him!”

She shows us an extremely horny painting entitledThe Youth of Bacchus,featuring a bunch of naked, nubile, wine-drunk revelers in a forest, either dancing or warming up for an orgy.

“Oh, yeah, I definitely see it,” Kit says. He zooms in on the central figure, a muscular, bronze-skinned man with a tambourine-waving child on his shoulders and a leopard hide barely concealing his dick. “Especially his, uh—his—”

He points at the grooves of abdominal muscle near the figure’s hips and takes a sip of wine, trusting me to choose the appropriate phrase. Iliac furrows? V-line? Adonis belt?

I say, “Cum gutters.”

Kit chokes.

“Kümgütter?” Birgitte asks. “What is this word, kümgütter?”

I thump Kit between the shoulders, smiling beatifically. “Kit, care to explain?”

“I—” Kit shoots me a look that’s half glare, half terrible delight. My smile widens. “It’s, ah, American slang for the lower muscles on the stomach.”

“Oh!” Lars exclaims. “We call this bäckenspåret! In America, I should say kümgütter?”

“No no no,” Kit says, distressed, “it’svulgarslang.”

“Is it?” Birgitte asks. She leans in with a twinkle in her eye. “What does it mean?”

Kit looks to me for help. I open the translation app on my phone and press the mic button until the digital bleat sounds.

“Cum gutter,” I enunciate loudly enough for the next tables to hear. “Huh, no results.”

“Please, you will not embarrass us,” Lars says. “Go on!”

Kit takes a breath. “So, during sex, when a person with a penis finishes on their partner’s stomach, and—”

“Ahhh, I see,” Lars interrupts, alight with glee. He says something to his wife in Swedish, and she nods knowingly.

“Cumandgutter! Two words!”

Despite my best efforts, this seems to have permanentlyendeared us to Lars and Birgitte. They ask us so many questions that I’m half expecting a Christmas card from Sweden this holiday season.

“And you two,” Lars says, gesturing between Kit and me, “you are—?”

“Friends,” I say.

“Old friends,” Kit elaborates.

“Very good! And how did you meet?”

Kit and I exchange a look, waiting each other out.

“We went to grade school together,” I say.

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