Page 45 of Slanting Towards the Sea

FORTY-TWO

A FEW DAYS INTO Asier’s two-week stay, Marina calls to invite me over for dinner.

It’s her forty-first birthday, but she doesn’t want to make a thing out of it; it would only be the three of us, some food, some beer.

I tell her I’d love to come, but that I’m busy that day, and when she offers other days in the same week, I decide I’m done hiding.

“You know that investor I told you about?”

“Yes?” she says, cautious.

“Well, we’re kind of seeing each other, and he’s, um, here. For another week. He took time off work to be with me, so it wouldn’t be fair to him if I blew him off for a night.” There, I said it. I told her what she’d wanted to know since the first time she’d heard about him.

Marina falls silent for a moment. “Why don’t you bring him with you then?”

My head goes woozy. Taking Asier to meet Vlaho, in Vlaho’s home? The image alone threatens to undo me. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Marina says. “If you’re truly moving on, then we all need to get used to it.” She says this fast, and it sounds logical at first, but when we hang up, I repeat the words in my head, and they leave me bewildered.

On our way to their apartment, Asier keeps teasing me. “I’m not going to get my lights punched out, right?” He’s amused to no end by what he calls our “triangle.”

I pretend to be game, but it irks me that we’re turning this into a joke.

It shouldn’t be a big deal, I’m pretending it’s not, but my every nerve is on high alert.

My lungs are cemented into two bricks sitting in my chest, I can only breathe in a few molecules at a time.

Having Asier meet Vlaho feels dangerous, like in one of those time-travel movies when the past shouldn’t meet the present, because it would make the future collapse.

“I didn’t punch Marina’s lights out back in the day.

You’ll be fine.” I try to sound casual. Whatever Marina meant to say the other day, she was right.

If we’re going to stay friends, the way we stayed friends when the two of them got together, we need to get past this.

It’s like ripping a bandage off, and I’m readying myself for the stinging pain of it being yanked back.

The elevator stops on the fourth floor. When we exit, Marina is already opening the apartment door.

She’s wearing a boho-style sundress. I don’t often see her wearing anything feminine, so this adds to the effect—she looks like a tanned goddess.

I’m struck with angst: What if Asier too finds her more attractive than me? But I push the thought aside.

“Hey, lovely.” She kisses my cheeks.

“Happy birthday.” I hand her a bouquet of sunflowers and a bottle of wine, and she hugs them to her chest so that she can shake hands with Asier.

“Welcome,” she says, then moves to the side to let us in.

We find Vlaho in the kitchen, preparing the fish for the grill. Asier reaches out for a shake, but Vlaho lifts to show his slimed hands. “Sorry,” he says, but doesn’t look it. Something tells me it wasn’t a coincidence he plunged his hands into the fish just as Marina was opening the door.

The table is set with a white-gray tablecloth and fine china.

They never use tablecloths except for special occasions.

On their big balcony, a fire is burning in the grill area.

A faint smell of smoke lingers in the air.

Vlaho washes up and opens a beer for me.

“Are you up for beer or wine?” he asks Asier.

I’ve never heard Vlaho string more than two words of English together; we never went anywhere where he’d need to use it, and it surprises me that even his English is doused in his southern accent.

“Wine would be nice.”

Vlaho nods, as if this tells him more than just Asier’s drinking preferences, and pours him a glass of red. We walk out to the balcony, overlooking the old town. The sun droops on the horizon, heavy and red like a zit about to burst, and the stone walls of the town glisten beneath.

“This view is spectacular,” Asier says.

“Where are the kids?” I ask.

“My mom took them for a few days.” Marina stands next to me, opening a beer for herself.

“Since this is going to be such a wild party, and all.” She nudges me, grimacing toward the men, standing rigid next to one another.

I’m transported back to those early days when I first started spending time with Vlaho and Marina after they’d gotten married.

It took some getting used to, knowing that the two of them made a couple, that I no longer had any claim over him.

Being territorial comes naturally; it’s an impulse I had to learn to let go of, that I’m sometimes still letting go of, and a bout of compassion fills me for Vlaho, who’ll now have to do the same.

An awkward beginning is all this is. The birthing pains of a triangle turning into a square.

Over the third glass of wine for Asier, and as many beers for the rest of us, the atmosphere starts to coalesce.

Marina’s tales of tourists’ antics make Asier laugh so hard he produces a series of throaty sounds I’ve never heard him create.

Marina has that effect on people, lifting the mood, making everything breezy, and as I watch her host—in the real sense of the word because she is seamlessly corralling the rest of us together—it becomes clear to me what a gift it is.

What a gift she is. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.

I wouldn’t have been here for the last six years, and that would’ve been a massive loss for us all.

She puts a bowl of tuna paté on the table, nudging Asier to take some, she’s made it herself, but when Asier politely declines, Vlaho asks if it’s a matter of taste or conviction.

“I was in Japan once,” Asier says, “and the business partners took me to see tuna fishing.” His face contorts. “Let’s just say I’m not eating tuna again.”

Vlaho doesn’t say anything, but his softening is obvious.

For similar reasons, he stopped eating octopus a few years ago.

They’re intelligent creatures, it’s cruel, he said, and asked Marina not to bring them home when she caught them on her tours.

For a while, she gave her spearfished octopuses away, but then she stopped catching them altogether, and Vlaho declared a victory for the oppressed octopi.

From there, they launch into a half-hour conversation about the fish industry and how much it’s polluting the oceans.

Vlaho tells Asier that the Adriatic sardines have become smaller.

They used to come fifteen in a kilo, and now there can be up to fifty.

Asier shares a few stories about the fishing trips he took with his friends while he was growing up in Indonesia.

It’s already midnight when Asier and I get up to go. Marina leans in to whisper in my ear, “Total success.” Her cheeks are flushed with alcohol and the visible relief and happiness that the night has gone so well. “Maybe we could all go to No? Punog Miseca the day after tomorrow?”

“Night of the Full Moon,” I translate for Asier. “It’s a fe?ta, a traditional celebration downtown. I guess we—”

“Great!” Marina claps her hands, and we all move down the hallway.

Asier and Vlaho shake hands, and Marina kisses me, then we change places, and as Marina hugs Asier goodbye, Vlaho hugs me, and says in Croatian, not lowering his voice, “He’s okay, I guess, but not good enough for you.

” I hug him close and say, equally loud, in Croatian, “You liar. You loved him.” There’s an air of finality, like we’re saying goodbye and not just for the night.

He breathes me in, his arms tight around me.

The feelings I have for him burble up, and the only reason I let him go is because Marina and Asier are standing there, watching us, waiting.