Page 6 of The Secret Dinner

I didn’t know if I should say thank you. I kept quiet.

“Is that an issue for you?” she asked.

“What?”

“Being gay.”

“No, not at all. My parents know, my friends know. Everybody’s cool with it. Why do you ask?”

“You just seem really uncomfortable,” she said, then squeezed my hands and tugged on my fingers one by one, like we’d known each other for years. “Hey, I don’t bite. Unless you’re paying me.”

“Sorry.” I didn’t want her to feel unwanted and made an effort to seem at ease. “It’s for a friend whose birthday is coming up on Monday. I’m pretty sure he’s a virgin.”

The waiter brought our food, and Cora’s attention was consumed by the chicken. I watched her bring her face close to it, flaring her nostrils and taking a big whiff, grinning with satisfaction. Without hesitation, she helped herself to a heaping portion of rice and broccoli and asked me if she could have the thighs.

“Sure.”

“You’re a sweetheart,” she said, dropping the spoon to pinch my cheek. She offered to serve me a plate.

“That’s enough, thanks.”

Cora ate a lot more than I did. She set my plate in front of me and unwrapped the cutlery.

“How old’s your friend?”

“Twenty-three.”

“And he’s still a virgin? You sure he’s not gay, too?”

“No, he’s not gay,” I replied, taking the first bite. “And he is a virgin.”

Cora didn’t ask for further explanation. She didn’t want to know why he was a virgin; she didn’t want to know he weighed almost four hundred pounds. Overcome with a voracious appetite, she leaned over her plate and opened her mouth wide, tucking into the chicken unabashedly. Once she’d polished off her sides, she put down her knife and fork and picked up the thighs with her hands.

“It’s so good, isn’t it?” she said, tearing off chunks of meat with her teeth and sucking on the bones to get every last morsel. “It’s funny … I used to work at a slaughterhouse back home in Goiás. My dad worked on a ranch. I grew up sticking, bleeding, deboning … That kind of thing. I’ve butchered more cattle than I’ve fucked people, you know. But I’ve never killed a chicken, can you believe it? I don’t know why, never had the guts, I guess. Chickens are different. I feel sorry for them.”

“But you still eat them…”

“Of course. They’re delicious. I was raised on chicken soup. Here in Brazil we eat cows but not horses. In France, they eat horses, but they don’t eat dogs. And did you know that in India they eat dogs but not cows? To each his own. Truth is, eating meat is just too good to resist.”

Cora finished gnawing on the last bone and tossed it onto the plate. There was still some rice and broccoli left, but she was no longer hungry. She wiped her hands on a napkin. Her lips glistened with the fat from the chicken and her brown eyes seemed more alive, invigorated by the meal.

“You know, I get it,” she said. “This whole virginity thing, it’s complicated. It can scar you for life. I lost mine when I was twelve, to my dad. He taught me everything. It was important because he was someone I trusted. What’s your friend’s name?”

I found her ease in saying such outrageous things shocking, but I tried to hide it. I wanted to stay on track. “Piglet. That’s what we call him, it’s his nickname.”

“I killed a lot of pigs back on the farm with my dad. They make a terrible scene, squealing and hollering. That was no life for me. Nobody goes to rural Brazil to find a better life. I had to come to Rio to build my nest egg. Did I tell you I want to be a poet like Cora Coralina? I write my own poetry from time to time.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Take his virginity?” she asked, popping a mint in her mouth. It was like she never stopped chewing. “What’s the deal? I feel like there’s more to it. Is he a dwarf, one-legged, one-eyed?”

“He’s fat.”

“How fat?”

“Really fat.”

“How fat is really fat?”