Page 219 of Two Marlboros

“Did you see that, Ginny?” said the boy next to the redhead. “You found someone with a sharper tongue than yours!”

She pulled it out to give him a tongue-lashing, then looked back at me to give me a defiant, but not grudging, smirk. I replied to her just as amused. Peace was made.

The table began chatting again, filling the atmosphere with the murmur of many overlapping voices; and since I didn’t know anyone and didn’t really know what to say, aside from answering a few ritual questions from Virginia and the other guy, my gaze began to wander around the room. My attention was caught by the stone fireplace behind the other head of the table, where the man who had scolded Virginia was seated; I could not see him in full, except for the Christmas wreath hanging on the mantle, but I could hear the fire crackling and see him casting a messy shadow in front of the man. Next door, toward the living room, I glimpsed a Christmas tree decorated with balls and flickering lights, and I thought it had been a long time since I had seen one in a house to which I was somehow attached. For a couple of years, I had kept a tabletop one in my apartment, but it brought me more sadness than joy, so I had given it to Satan’s beasts - Carter and Cathy - for them to play with; I was pretty sure it had come to a bad end.

I was embarrassed by the idea of crossing the eyes of the other diners - Virginia aside, whose cheekiness almost made me feel at home - so I merely observed the ceiling of the rest of theroom, with a bright chandelier hanging over the table, and the walls filled with a few contemporary-style paintings.

Having finished that scan, my stomach gurgled, and my gaze fell on the table, set with a red tablecloth, a couple of candles, and a series of trays that contained a few slices of salmon on dark bread and something that resembled a sausage wrapped in bacon. My mouth watered despite the fact that it was something I had never eaten, but I didn’t even have a fork.

“Honey,” Alan’s mom (or the one I imagined was such) exclaimed, “get a plate and cutlery for Nathan too, at least he can eat something. You’re hungry, I guess.”

Torn between the polite refusal I should have expressed and my stomach beginning to cramp, I finally chose to listen to my primal instincts.

“I’m so hungry I could eat the tray, too.”

Once the plate and cutlery arrived, I discovered that the smoked salmon was a typical English Christmas dinner appetizer, and that that salmon came directly from the Scottish moors, the homelands of Abigail, the freckled redhead. The pigs in blankets, i.e. sausages with bacon, also turned out to be a great treat, in some ways even more like the flavors I was used to. I served myself a couple of times because it was really good, but I tried to pull myself together because I was also capable of brushing all those trays in five minutes, and maybe I wouldn’t have looked so good in their eyes.

I bit into the last bite of the pigs in blankets when Virginia’s voice filled the air and caught everyone’s attention. Another omen of doom, I was sure.

“So, Nathan, what are you doing here? Have you come to see some relatives?”

I stopped chewing, and that response elicited general silence. It was quite evident that my appearance in the Scottfield house had attracted more than a little curiosity, something Ihadn’t really factored in - then again, impulsive gestures are not known for their intelligence. I looked up and crossed several curious glances as my brain did not decide to cooperate. Okay, the first step was not to arouse suspicion: I resumed chewing and with that excuse tried to stall. Step two: look for a good answer. A mission that, to no one’s surprise, failed before it even began.

“No, no relatives,” I replied, hoping that would be enough, but Virginia still had her eyes glued on me, as if she expected a follow-up to that sentence. I understood where she was going with this and what the question she was seeking an answer to was, and there I had only to choose whether to give up my dignity right away or try to salvage what could be saved. Or maybe there was a middle ground.

“No, well,” and there I felt I would regret what I was about to say, “I just dropped by to say hello to Alan, so to speak.”

“You came from California just to say hello to Alan?”

“Virginia!” the voice from across the table burst out again. “Mind your own business! Can’t you see he’s embarrassed? What the heck!”

I met my savior’s gaze and without uttering a word thanked him for saving me from that uncomfortable situation. I turned to the girl to take my victory, but she shot me an impatient look for an answer. And I certainly wouldn’t have given it to her, were it not for the curious glances I discerned in almost all the diners. I knew I was going to get into trouble with the greeting thing. I tried to correct my pitch, but I wasn’t sure I was improving my position.

“Yeah, here, let’s say I came back from California last night, heard that Alan was here, and so I said, ‘Why not extend the trip and stop by and say hello?’ That’s all.”

I ended that sentence with a smile, but the expression on everyone else’s face remained unchanged. Was I talking bullshitafter bullshit? Yes, I was talking bullshit after bullshit. Was I better off keeping quiet? Definitely.

“Well,” Virginia replied, and I prepared to feign nonchalance by drinking some water, “that’s a long way for a friend. Unless you’re...” and she made air quotes, “...a ‘friend.’”

I almost choked. Where was that saving voice that scolded Virginia every time she said inappropriate things? I sought the gaze of the man who had bailed me out a moment earlier, but he kept his eyes downcast. The glass remained resting against my lips, and I took a few seconds to put it back down, seconds during which I avoided everyone’s gaze. Virginia really was a tough cookie, I had to admit. And the middle ground had not worked, just zero. It was time to divert course toward “denial without ifs and buts.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, dear Virginia, but at the moment I am without quotation marks.”

With that answer and a well-placed smile, I had satiated the curiosity of those present, although it was not quite true that I was a friend without quotation marks - let’s just say that I had had them for one evening and that at that moment I had half of them and was there to figure out what to do with them. In the meantime, I wondered how the heck long it would take to find two pills and go home, because when I had agreed to sit at the table with all of them, I had imagined myself more of a fixture than the star of the meal.

“By the way, Alan hadn’t told us anything about your arrival,” a rosy-cheeked woman next to the man-savior then said, and I seemed to detect a veil of curiosity in her tone, however more discreet than Virginia’s impertinence. The next moment I thought that perhaps the girl was her daughter, and it appeared crystal clear to me from whom she had made a habit of not minding her own business.

“Here, let’s say...” and I felt all their eyes planted on me again, “...he might not know I’m here.”

“Is this a surprise?” asked Alan’s mom, sitting on the other side of the table, two seats down. Heck, the low profile hadn’t worked either. I hadn’t used the word “surprise” on purpose, because it gave that affair a pretty sentimental edge - not that it didn’t have it, but I’d much rather have kept it to myself. And the fact that she had been the one to ask that question, which implied a whole host of things, made me burn with embarrassment. Like, “Hey, nice to meet you, I’m your son’s boyfriend.”

“Something like that.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Virginia raise her arms, and when I turned around, I caught her making air quotes with a satisfied smile on her face. Meanwhile, a series of excited howls arose from the rest of the people there. I had a feeling it was too late to deny everything; after all, who would go overseas on Christmas Eve to surprise a friend? No one. No one at all. Certainly, by putting the quotes in, the situation took on a whole different and, in many ways, logical look, and I was sure that just as I had gotten there, so had they. How embarrassing. Where had I left the shovel?

“Then we have to find a place to hide you,” Virginia’s mom said with renewed enthusiasm, and when I met her daughter’s gaze I read, for the first time, an expression of genuine excitement.

“Yes! We have to arrange something!” she replied in a shrill voice, her eyes shining.

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