Page 64 of Here We Go Again

ROSEMARY

“I’m going to come,” Logan moans. “Seriously, I’m about to orgasm.”

Rosemary kicks her under the table. “Could you not? We’re in public.”

Logan obscenely licks a glob of green chilies off her finger, and Rosemary does not think about kissing her yesterday. Not even a little bit. “I can’t help it. This is a sexual eating experience.”

They’re eating brunch at the Pueblo Indian Kitchen that’s part of the cultural center in Albuquerque. Joe insisted they drive here straight from the hospital, since Rosemary had been so excited about it as part of their detour. But if she’d known Logan would make such pornographic noises while eating her Rancheros de Albuquerque, Rosemary might have protested the decision. Rosemary tries to focus on her Pueblo pie, but it’s… distracting.

Logan unleashes one last toe-curling groan, then throws down her cloth napkin to signal the end of her meal. “I think it’s time to address the elephant dick in the room,” she announces as she rubs her belly contentedly. She then reaches into the backpack at her feet and pulls out the nude painting of Joe. Slams it down on the table in the middle of the crowded patio.

Joe chokes on his atole. Rosemary is equally disoriented to find herself reunited with Joe’s penis.

“How…?” Joe tries. “How did you get that?”

“We have our ways. Which is to say, we bought it over the phone before we left Santa Fe,” Logan answers with an equally distracting wink at Rosemary. “And the gallerist kindly delivered it to our hotel room.”

“It was fifteen hundred dollars!”

“And worth every penny on the credit card I’ll never pay off,” Logan sings.

“And you’ve been carrying that around in your backpack?”

“Where else would I keep a naked painting of my English teacher?”

“We?” Joe clutches his chest and gasps. “You saidwe! Rosie, my favorite, please tell me you had nothing to do with the acquisition of this art?”

She gives him a pitying look. “I had to.”

“Honestly, if I had a nude where I looked this good, I would want it preserved in the Smithsonian.”

“I died, didn’t I?” Joe closes his eyes and does a pantomime of the sign of the cross. “I died in that hospital, and now I’m in hell.”

“Joe.” Rosemary grabs his shoulder. “We have to talk about Remy St. Patin. He was clearly very important to you.”

Joe visibly flinches at Remy’s name. “He… he didn’t mean anything to me.”

“False.” Logan jabs a finger at the painting. “Exhibit A: you’re semihard in this painting.”

Joe waves his hand. “Enough about my dick. Put that thing away.”

Logan slowly places it face down on the table.

“Exhibit B: you still carry around his handkerchief.”

Joe shifts nervously in his chair. “Okay, fine.Fine. I’ll tell you about Remy. I-I should’ve just told you about him in the first place.”

Logan makes a smuggo aheadgesture. Joe takes a deep breath.

“Remy was… a man I once knew,” he starts specifically.

“In the Biblical sense, clearly.”

His pain grimace appears in the corner of his mouth. “He was my…”

“Lover?” Logan guesses.

Joe heaves a sigh proportional to Logan’s badgering. “I was going to say that he was my one regret.”