“No.”
“You don’t know him?”
“I don’t get it. Do you think I’m cheating on you or something?”
“He says he knows you.”
“How?”
“Very well, apparently.”
“I don’t know anybody named Chuck. What, this just happened to come up while he was delivering the mail?”
“As a matter of fact….”
“That’s crazy.”
“He saw you mowing the lawn. He said he knew you before. He knew you before. Is it true?”
“You’re telling me the guy who delivers the mail came in and mentioned in passing that he fucked me?”
“Yeah.”
“To the minister? He just walked in and said to the minister, ‘Here’s the mail, and by the way, I fucked your custodian’?”
“Not like that, but basically, yeah.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You’re avoiding my question.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Maybe.”
“How can you not know?”
“That’s a stupid question,” Ian said, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry, it just is.”
“How could you just….”
“Just what? Have a life before I met you? What do you want me to do about it? You’re talking about the past. What exactly do you want me to do about it now? Do you have a time machine?”
“No.”
“Well, then shut up.”
Ian tightened his jaw and turned to face the window. They rode the rest of the way home in silence. When they got back into the house, Ian went immediately into the kitchen and started preparing dinner, banging the bowls and pans as he went. Paul sat in the living room for a while, listening to the slamming drawers and the vigorous chopping. When the noise had died down sufficiently, Paul went into the kitchen. Ian was standing at the stove with his back to the door, browning hamburger and chopped onions in a frying pan. He didn’t turn around.
Paul leaned against the door frame. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Ian kept right on pushing the food around with the spatula.
“Look at me,” Paul said.
Ian turned. There were tears on his cheeks.
“You’re crying,” Paul said.
“It’s the onions,” Ian said, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand. He turned back to the hamburger.