Authors: Zack Love
“Not at all,” she replied calmly.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Of course not,” Carolina answered, in a perfectly relaxed and matter-of-fact tone. “But it’s a shame because now we can’t have sex until I’m sure that you’ve been faithful to me.”
These shocking words – uttered with such pedestrian nonchalance – roused Carlos from his post-orgasm indolence. He sat up and looked at her, his face beginning to panic.
“What do you mean? What’s wrong? I didn’t do anything with those guys…I just joined them because of Sammy,” he began to explain, repeating the group’s original raison d’être and how Sammy had been disconsolate.
“And how would you feel if I joined a woman’s group like that? If I frequented the city’s bars and clubs with four single, horny women and kept it a secret from you for almost half a year?”
Carlos silently tried to imagine his reaction for a moment. The hypothetical definitely provoked jealousy in him but he immediately began searching for some way to claim that it was irrational and unjustified jealousy. Carolina continued on the offensive. “So there you have it. You would be jealous too, which is why – ”
“But I didn’t say that, mi amor, I just – ”
“You didn’t need to say it…It was all over your face as you searched desperately for some justification.” She looked away for a moment, as if to leave her husband alone in the spotlight, where some invisible audience could behold his shameful loss in the discussion. “But don’t worry,” she continued, looking back into his eyes. “There’s an easy solution to all of this.”
Carlos began caressing her shoulder and arm, “What is it, Carolina? How can we fix this?”
“We can have a child.”
Carlos stopped caressing her and took a hard swallow.
“Why does everything have to come back to that these days? I’ve already told you that I’m not ready yet.”
“Because you hurt me with this posse thing, Carlos. And you would be hurt if I did it to you. And because I want babies. With you.”
“Babies? How did we go from a singular child to plural babies?”
“Yes, plural. I want several babies. At least three. With you. And if you’re the father of my children you’ll be too busy being a daddy to go out with your single buddies, flirting with other women, shaving your head and buying exotic dogs for our apartment.”
“I can’t just become a daddy now, mi amor. I need more time. You just have to patient.”
“But I’ve been patient, mi amor. And my biological clock is ticking faster every day.”
“I’m just not ready at twenty-seven to be a father. And I’d rather adopt. It’s the moral thing to do.”
“We can have three babies of our own and then adopt some more.”
Carlos rolled his eyes.
“You really do want me to be a full time daddy.”
“I’ve been wanting it for a while now.”
“Since you turned thirty.”
“You know it’s not that!”
“Well I’m not thirty yet, and I hate it when people try to round me up from twenty-seven.”
“I’m not rounding you up.”
“And I’m not having kids yet.”
“How do I know you’re not cheating on me with those guys?”
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
“No, you’ll just have to convince me, unless you don’t mind going celibate until you decide to have kids with me.”
Carlos turned away for a moment, looked up at the ceiling, and then looked back at Carolina, exhaling in stressful frustration, like a squirrel cornered by a pack of wolves.
“All right. You win. How do you want me to convince you?”
“First, I want you to describe for me, in lots of detail, every night that you’ve gone out with this posse.”
“Every night?”
“Si, mi amor. And then I want you to answer any follow up questions I have about those nights. And we’re going to video tape all of our discussions, for handy reference later.”
“Video tape?”
“Si, mi amor. And then I want a private interview, as long as necessary, with each member of this posse of yours.”
“Private interview with each member?”
“Si, mi amor. And I’m going to ask each of them individually whatever questions occur to me. Of course, the information that you will have supplied beforehand will be helpful in formulating my questions.”
“You’re going to depose my friends?”
“Si, mi amor. And then, if there are any particular interview portions that don’t quite match up with what you told me, you and I can watch that portion of the interview together. And then you’ll have a chance to try to explain away the discrepancy.”
“Explain away the discrepancy?”
“Si, mi amor. And after that, if there are no unexplained discrepancies, we can start having sex again without having babies.”
“Without babies?” he repeated, with some relief.
“Well, no babies for another five months or so,” she clarified. “Then we can revisit the issue properly.”
Carlos was silent for a moment. He felt overwhelmed, trying to imagine the days and weeks ahead. “I can’t believe this…Is this really the only way to reassure you?”
“Well there is one other way.”
“What is it, mi amor?”
“I start joining you on every posse outing, and you start joining me on each of my visits to married couples with children…And you sign up with me for some parenting 101 classes, and we start babysitting for my friends, so that we can get a little taste of parenthood together.”
Carlos took a moment to envision the second alternative. He quickly concluded that he would be powerfully pressured into paternity within a matter of weeks and there would really be no escape at that point. He told Carolina that he needed a few days to reflect on the options she had laid before him.
After explaining his predicament to the posse, he opted for the inquisition.
Chapter 32
Big News Makes Evan Elated but Panicked
Evan’s apartment was a little small to be shared with an Afghan Hound, but he and his new pet were slowly adjusting to their cramped coexistence. The real challenge for Evan was accepting his new haircut. Two days after he and the posse had shaved everything off, Evan was beginning to feel OK about his appearance. But on Wednesday night, April 5, 2001, the third day of his Kojak look, Evan came home to two unexpected messages on his answering machine.
Message one was an invitation to be interviewed for a full-time position as a neural network developer for the financial modeling division of a prestigious but stuffy investment bank. This was the first promising interview he had obtained after three weeks of sending out resumes, and he wasn’t thrilled about trying to impress a notoriously conservative corporate employer with his totally hair-free head. As he jotted down the details of the message, he wondered whether he could somehow postpone the interview for a month, so that his hair could grow back into what would then look like a military-style crew cut.
The second message, however, was the one that truly made Evan panic about having zero hair for the coming weeks. Indeed, message two was so dramatic that he would end up forgetting to follow up about the job interview offered in message one.
“Hi, I’m trying to get in touch with Evan Cheson,” the voice began. “We’ve never spoken before and I don’t know if you were expecting a call from me, but this is Delilah Nakova…I’m calling you because my agency sent me your novel, and I just finished reading it. And I guess I’m calling to tell you that I really enjoyed it…In fact, I think it’s one of the best novels I’ve read in a very long time, and I don’t know if you’ve given much thought to the possibility of adapting it into a film, but I personally get very excited just thinking about it. I hope you don’t think it’s too forward or random of me to contact you like this, but I’d love to meet the person who wrote this novel, and I’d also like to talk to you about adapting it into a screenplay.”
And then she left her cell phone number and email and said that she really hoped to hear from him soon, noting that she would be in New York City for a week starting tomorrow.
Evan began to hyperventilate from elation and nearly passed out. He replayed the message to himself seven times, thinking that he would eventually believe his ears. When he finally convinced himself that the message was real, he made three backup recordings of it. Then he called Heeb and replayed it to him several times. Then he played it for Trevor, Narc, and Carlos. A little later, he realized that he had just inadvertently disclosed the movie star’s contact details to four people, so he had to call everyone back to confirm that no one had made a note of her private details. He extracted solemn promises from each friend not to use or divulge her information if it somehow popped back into memory.
Evan couldn’t stop thinking about how April 5, 2001 was without a doubt, the greatest day of his life. And he repeatedly thanked the divine powers behind this miracle for timing its occurrence while he was away, because – had he been home to pick up the phone – he would have surely made a complete ass of himself from the mere shock of the call.
For fifty minutes, Evan obsessively examined his hairless scalp in the bathroom mirror from various angles while talking to Heeb on his cordless phone for the fifth time that night. “But she wants to meet tomorrow and I don’t have any fucking hair!” he exclaimed.
“Now you know how I feel every day,” Heeb replied.
“Can’t you at least acknowledge that the fellowship of the schlong has required some very heavy sacrifices on my part?”
“What about that unconvincing reassurance you always give me?” Heeb replied.
“You mean that she might be into bald guys?”
“That’s the one!” Heeb said, delighted that the tables were finally turned for a change.
“Heeb you’re not helping.”
“OK, why don’t you look at the bright side?” Heeb said.
“What bright side?”
“You’ve substantially lowered the odds that she’ll recognize you as the guy from that wild Mexican party at Float, who first belittled her beloved Czech language and then nuked the unisex bathroom just as she was trying to use it. And she also won’t recognize you as the guy from the Operation-Repulsive encounter at Duane Reade, six months ago.”
Evan was silent for a moment as he thought about this.
“You know, I think you may have a point there…But what will I do once my hair grows back and she sees me looking like I did on one of those two incidents?”
“I don’t think you’ll ever again look like you did during Operation Repulsive. That was too good even for Halloween. And the Float incident was two years ago…I really doubt she’ll remember that. Unless, of course, you’re stupid enough to remind her somehow.”
“Given my record with Delilah Nakova, we really can’t discount that possibility.”
Chapter 33
The Posse’s Problems
During the month that followed the momentous message from Delilah Nakova, the posse was confronted with a few challenges. Trevor became more serious about Luigi, who began insisting that he be allowed to join him when he went out with his gang. Carolina subjected each member of the guy group to her rigorous tape-recorded interrogations, and Carlos had a difficult time making it up to his buddies.
After three weeks of no sex and rigorous questioning, Carolina finally and correctly concluded that her husband had been admirably faithful, given the many opportunities he had had to cheat on her with very desirable women. Carlos was so thrilled to be having sex with his wife again, and so relieved to be absolved of her accusations that he became increasingly loath – even uninterested – in joining his friends for a night out unless Carolina could come along.
The posse was genuinely torn about whether to admit the two individuals who were actively applying for membership rights. Most of the posse members were especially uncomfortable with having Carolina accompany them after having recently squirmed under her piercing depositions.
Even more threatening to the posse’s continued viability was the situation with Evan. On April 6, one day after the message that sent him into a euphoric tailspin, Carolina tried questioning him on videotape. She became frustrated with how little he could focus on her questions, and how he kept seeking her advice with respect to Delilah Nakova. After two hours of mostly fruitless investigation, she concluded that he had no useful information for her and released him. That was the last that anyone had seen Evan for four weeks, although a week after his interrogation he did resume regular phone communication with everyone during his absence.
The posse did manage to meet twice in Evan’s absence, and on several other occasions Heeb and Narc were forced to prowl without the rest of the crew, unless they were prepared to invite Luigi and Carolina to join them. So the two briefly mulled the possibility.
“Chicks are chick magnets,” Narc pointed out. “And Carolina is smokin’ hot. So it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for her to come along.”
“I just feel weird going out with the Grand Inquisitor,” Heeb replied.
“Word. Well, what about leaving Lucky Chucky and Carolina out, but we take Trevor and Luigi?”
“I guess we could do that, but that would change things too much…And it’s just not the same without the others.”
“I hear ya’,” Narc said.
And so Narc and Heeb decided to go out on their own a few times. As they considered the fortunes and circumstances of each member, they speculated about how much longer the group would last, but assured each other that they would continue going out together as long as they were both single.
Chapter 34
Evan and Delilah
Evan totally forgot about the posse because of the unforgettably surreal experience with Delilah Nakova that began on the night of April 6, just a few hours after Carolina’s deposition ended. At 8 p.m., Evan closed his front door and approached Delilah Nakova’s limousine, parked outside of his apartment, as if it were some exotic space ship that was about to take him to another world. Inside the limo was Delilah Nakova, in all of her graceful beauty and down to earth charm, sporting a mysterious, Asian look. Her black hair was neatly and tightly folded against her head and wrapped into a chignon secured by wooden hairpins. She wore an elegant red and black peony cheongsam made of silk. Her radiant face, long dark eyelashes, mocha-colored skin, and elegantly feminine figure seemed almost surreal to Evan as he stepped into her limousine and closed the door.