The Turnover [EDITING]

Chapter 5

I took up Neri’s offer to drive me home, with Eloisa joining me in the back seat.

“I need to get away from the house right now,” Eloisa explained. “I don’t want Paul to start laying down the law on me after what happened tonight.”

I was tempted to tell both sisters that they should have left Paul alone, but it wasn’t my place to comment as an outsider. “Paul does get a lot of pressure to settle down, does he?”

“He’s the oldest, and the only boy,” Neri said, as she made a turn towards the main thoroughfare. “We girls don’t get the same pressure to settle down—right, sis?”

Eloisa winced. “Superstition. If Sean and I get married before Paul does, it might bring bad luck to the family.”

“That’s what they said about Tita Violet—she and Tito Carding had to wait for Itay and Inay to get married.” And look how it turned out for her. “Do you really buy into the superstition thing, though?”

“I don’t, but after all the weddings that we’ve worked on, I’m beginning to have second thoughts.”

That still did not excuse the entire family from putting Paul in the spotlight, though. “So,” I asked, keeping my tone light, “what about the girl?”

“You mean the fiancée,” said Eloisa.

Neri groaned.

“You have to excuse Neri,” Eloisa continued. “She doesn’t—”

“Can we not talk about Pam right now? Please?”

So the ghost fiancée had a name, after all. And judging from Neri’s reaction, I could only wonder what the poor woman had done to warrant all that hate.

“She is a snob,” Neri exclaimed. “Every time that she came over for dinner, she would always look at her plate like we had served her a dish full of live worms.”

“You can’t expect everyone to love your cooking, Neri,” Eloisa assured. “Besides, you were still at the culinary academy when Paul started bringing her over for dinner.”

“But I tried, sis,” she continued. “I made the best dinners ever when they were together. Blue marlin steaks, rosemary chicken, roasted vegetables. And she would just take tiny little bites, like we were forcing her to break her diet or something.”

“She wasn’t that skinny, Neri.”

“Basta, sis. She’s the only girlfriend of Paul’s that I can’t stand.”

Now this conversation had gotten interesting. “Paul had girlfriends?”

“Not ‘girlfriend’ girlfriends,” Eloisa clarified. “He went out with a few girls when he was still in Woodrose.”

“Sis,” Neri said, “tell Monica about Chinese Food Girl.”

“Chinese Food Girl?” I asked. “What happened there?”

Eloisa giggled. “Check this out, Monica. When Paul was in sixth grade, he was interested in this girl, so he tried to court her with Chinese food.”

“Siomai,” Neri said. “He bought siomai for her. ‘To siomai love for you.’”

Holy crap, that was the corniest come-on that I had ever heard in my life.

“And not just that, Monica. He also bought hopia for her.”

“‘Hopia love me too,’” said Eloisa.

I take it back. This was the corniest come-on that I had ever heard in my life. “Did it work?”

“Well, it did get Paul a date to the Woodrose school dance,” said Eloisa.