Peter stormed out of the bistro. Pam, her face wrought with distress, followed.
“Cheating whore,” muttered Peter to himself.
“Wait up, Peter,” said Pam, hurrying to close the distance between them.
“Why the hell should I?”
“Because you’re on fire!”
Indeed he was. The hem of Peter’s coat was smouldering. It was a slow burn.
“Don’t change the subject,” said Peter. “I caught you red-handed.”
“For Christ’s sake, Peter,” said Pam, as a light breeze stoked the fire to life, “your coat is on fire!”
“Right in front of me, right in front of everyone,” said Peter. “Hell, everyone in ‘no smoking’ saw it.”
“For the love of God, Peter,” said Pam, waving smoke out of her eyes, “let me help you!”
“No, let me help you,” said Peter, stopping and turning to glare at Pam. “Our waiter said, ‘Hello, my name is Gunnar and I’ll be your server.’ He did not say, ‘Hello, I’m a big, strapping Swede. Why not flirt with me right in front of your puny, non-Swedish boyfriend? That’s just what he needs so soon after losing a testicle at work.’ See the difference?”
“Oh, not the testicle thing again,” said Pam, rolling her eyes. “It wasn’t even your testicle, it was one of van Gogh’s testicles in a jar that you bought on eBay, and it probably wasn’t even his. I mean, what are the odds? But that’s you, frittering money away like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Are you sure you want to talk about money right now?” said Peter, fuming both figuratively and literally. “That’s not going to make it any easier to forget how much you spent on those fucking Desperate Housewives collector plates.”
“Fine,” said Pam, her face firming like quick-setting mortar, “let’s only talk about what you want to talk about. While we’re at it, let’s only go to the movies you want to see, and let’s only funnel money to the hate groups you want to support.”
“Hey, Jews for Judas is not a hate group,” said Peter. “I know it, you know it, and those assholes at The Hague know it. Dutch bastards,” he added through clenched teeth.
“Oh, let it go, Peter,” said Pam. “I know your stepmother made you wear wooden shoes until you were thirteen, but it wasn’t part of a Dutch plot against you and the free world, it was just lousy parenting. Besides, your stepmother wasn’t even Dutch, she was French-Canadian. Get over it, already.”
“Gee, okay,” said Peter. “While we’re getting over things, why don’t you get over the whole pirate thing?”
“Pirate thing?” said Pam, taken aback. “My father was a pirate, Peter. He was convicted of piracy and hanged for it in Senegal. The other kids called me Pinkbeard the Pirate all through high school. That’s not apirate thing, Peter, that’s a lifetime’s worth of emotional scarring. How am I supposed to get over that?”
“Well, for one thing, you could stop wearing the eye patch,” said Peter.
“You said it looked sexy,” said Pam, self-consciously fingering the black patch that covered her right eye.
“It did, for a while,” said Peter. “Now it just looks weird.”
“Fine,” snapped Pam, tearing off the eye patch and flinging it away. “Are you happy now?”
“I’ll be happy,” said Peter evenly, “when you admit you flirted with our waiter.”
“All right, already,” said Pam with an exasperated shrug. “I flirted with our waiter.”
“Aha!” said Peter, somewhat pointlessly.
Peter was still on fire, by the way. Indeed, the flames had just reached the patch on his coat that identified him as a volunteer fireman. Some people would have found that ironic, but none of them were around.
“It was just a little harmless fun,” said Pam. “I mean, you were so busy with your origami locust, I didn’t think you’d notice. But I’m sorry, okay?” She turned away to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m very sorry.”
Peter was about to launch another angry salvo when the soft purr of womanly weeping stopped him cold. “Oh, Pam,” he said, his voice a fancy pastry of contrition with a dozen creamy layers of regret, “I don’t want to fight, I just — holy shit! I’m on fire!”
“I don’t want to fight, either,” said Pam.
“Jesus Christ, help me!” screamed Peter, trying to claw his way out of his blazing clothes, but they had melted together into a form-fitting polyweave shroud.
“It’s like we can’t communicate anymore,” said Pam, “like we speak different languages or something.”
“Arrrgh!” cried Peter, beating frantically at the flames with his hands, but his hands were already on fire, so this did nothing.
“Maybe we’ve just said all there is to say already,” said Pam.
Peter, his head now completely engulfed in flames, stumbled back and forth until he tripped and fell down an open manhole that had been there all along.
“I don’t know, Peter, maybe we —” said Pam, turning to see that Peter was no longer there. “Oh, isn’t that typical,” she continued, her lip curling in annoyance. “Running off as soon as someone starts talking about feelings. Jerk.”
Just then, the front door of the bistro opened and Gunnar emerged carrying a purse.
“Excuse me, miss,” said Gunnar, “I think you forgot this.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Pam, blushing slightly as she took the purse.
“Are you all right, miss?” asked Gunnar.
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Pam. “But, you know, love is hard.”
“Gunnar knows this well,” said Gunnar. “When you have loved as many beautiful women as Gunnar has, you learn not only to take the good with the bad, but also to make the best of the bad, because there will always be so much of it. So says Gunnar.”
“That’s nice. Do you want to get a drink sometime?”
“You’re not Dutch, are you?”
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