Page 66 of The Secret Dinner

“But Umberto thinks he’s the one who selected the cuts.”

“Cora’s still going to help out,” I said.

I knew Miguel was on the brink of losing it completely. I couldn’t let him do that job all alone. He’d become a burden. It was a downer having him around, just sitting there depressed, a constant reminder of what we were doing. Still, kicking him out was off the table.

“Cora is part of the Seagull Meat Team,” insisted Piglet. “Dante, Miguel, and I all agree on that. If you disagree, Hugo, that’s your problem.”

He sighed, accepting defeat. I transferred sixteen thousand to each of their checking accounts, and later, when she arrived to spend the night with Piglet, I transferred Cora her share. The next day, Piglet came to talk to me.

“I don’t want Umberto to know about Cora. He might try to steal my girl. She’s all I’ve got, Dante.”

I understood his concern. It would be unbearable if she wound up in bed with that narcissistic old fool. No doubt as soon as he laid eyes on her, Umberto would try something. I assured Piglet that Cora’s involvement would stay between us, and relief filled his eyes. Being in love must be hell.

Every woman wants a gay best friend, and Cora was determined for me to be hers. We got to talking over the next few days while Piglet slept or played video games in his room. She was an incredible woman, beautiful, funny, and delightfully amoral. She had her quirks, like her camera shyness and her collection of colorful stickers. She talked nonstop about her past back in Goiás, how her mother had died in childbirth, her borderline marital relationship with her father, her first poems, early mornings spent gutting cattle, her arrival in the big city, and her first time with Piglet.

“Is Cora your real name?”

She was annoyed: “Of course it is, I already told you. After Cora Coralina.”

With time, she opened up to me completely. She’d cry in front of me, unabashed, telling me all kinds of personal stuff and showing me her poems.

“One day, I’ll be published,” she said proudly. “All these shitty publishers want are mainstream books … That’s not what I do, I make art for art’s sake, Dante!”

I read her poems. They were all pretty cringey, unsubtle, most of them crude, but Cora thought she was a genius, and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her otherwise. In the end, she was right: There was already so much crap for sale in bookstores, so why not hers?

Once, on the wall of a public restroom, I saw a poem:

ANYTHING

CAN BE POETRY IF

YOU HIT

ENTER

ONCE

IN A WHILE

2

Thursday night, two days before our first secret dinner in the new house, the two of us knocked back a bottle of Red Label that Cora had bought. We were wasted, alone in the living room. Hugo had spent the last few hours locked in his room poring over cookbooks and in the kitchen testing recipes, Miguel had gone out with Rachel, and Piglet needed to finish the new Call of Duty. She’d taken my phone to look for guys on Tinder, pretending she was me. She got a kick out of it.

“If there’s one thing I understand, it’s men,” she said, swiping right and left. “Check out this one: blond, cute, but he’s got a tiny dick. You can tell by the size of his thumb.”

I laughed, tucking my thumbs inside my fist. Cora laughed too and laid her head on my lap.

“Wait a minute, that one was hot!” I complained, as she continued to swipe.

“Boring. Nobody wants a heteronormative gay guy.” Cora put the phone down and looked at me. “Are you nervous?”

“A little. I’m not really sure what to expect tomorrow.”

We’d arranged to go to Umberto’s apartment to tie up loose ends for Saturday’s dinner.

“It’ll all be fine.”

“I didn’t want you to be upset about not going…”