…Without warning, Carmela came around the corner and pulled Nita out of sight of the dining room.
“Who. Is. Your. Friend??” she whispered. “Where did he come from??”
“Ireland. There’s this town on the coast, it’s called Bray – ”
“No no no,” Carmela said, waving her hands helplessly in the air, “I meant it in a much more, you know, existential way. I was referring to his basic, you know, hotness — “
Nita had to work to keep from snickering at Carmela’s loss of composure. “Yeah,” she said, “while I was there I noticed that there did seem to be a lot of really good looking Irish guys. I started to wonder if maybe there was something in the water.”
Carmela put her head down by Nita’s and whispered, if possible, even more quietly. “Is he attached?”
“In ways it would take me hours, if not days, to describe,” Nita said, “yes.”
Carmela’s face fell.
“But none of them are those kinds of ways,” Nita said.
A smile appeared slowly on Carmela’s face. “Oh, good.”
Nita raised her eyebrows. “You’re going to break Filif’s heart, you know.”
“Oh no — my feelings for him go right down to the root.”
Nita groaned. “And what about Roshaun?”
“Roshaun? Please. That would be poaching,” Carmela said.
While Nita started to try to work that one out, Carmela grinned at her, then strolled back into the dining room in the most casual manner imaginable.
Finally Nita shook her head. And I thought things were too weird around here already. I think we’re about to set a weirdness baseline the likes of which the planet has never seen…
