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Brian brought it up on a Tuesday. They were watching reruns of Pimp My Ride, which he and Letty thought was funny and Mia thought was the dumbest thing on television. Dom thought it should have been outlawed under the Geneva Convention, because they’d just lowered a perfectly good ’81 Firebird three inches, to the point where you just wanted to put the thing out of its misery instead of having to watch it struggle up driveways, and the reason was so that they could put in a ping-pong table. He was letting it slide, because there was nothing else good on, and the other option was watching some blonde on TSC tell them about all the kinds of personalized jewelry and cookware you could get for $49.99 with free shipping. Brian had already gone, “You think Mia would want a silver nameplate necklace?” Dom had said, “I’d go for the nonstick pan.”
He was half zoned out anyway, because they were both pretty done-in, coming off of six hours in the garage. They had a new project, a third-gen Torino Sport with the Cobra-Jet, pretty beat up, but a lot of potential. Letty had found it, which was kind of weird. She didn’t bring home a lot of junkers, and she was more into the whole biker thing at the moment, but he guessed she had seen it and thought of him, which was nice. Anyway, they’d finished taking out the whole engine, which had involved a lot of grunting and straining, Brian bracing himself against the winch, biceps flexing, and Dom hauling on the chain and cursing when it swung wide and clipped the hood. But they’d kept it mostly in one piece and gotten it lowered onto a tarp, and Brian had been panting, all sweaty, and Dom’s legs had felt like Jell-O. He’d been able to make it to the fridge for a six-pack and the bottle opener, and then he’d collapsed down onto the couch and hadn’t had it in him to wrestle Brian for the remote.
So, he was about two commercials from just passing out, and then Brian took a pull from his beer and then set it down on the coffee table. He was using a parts catalog as a coaster, and Dom guessed that they both heard Mia’s voice in their heads sometimes. He shifted a little, moved his hand to the armrest and then back to his knee, and said, “Do you think something’s going on with Mia and Letty?”
“What, like a fight?” He didn’t think so. He didn’t know what they would have to fight about, except, like, sometimes Mia could get a little overbearing about sunscreen.
Brian had been looking at the TV. Now he turned, and he was kind of chewing his lip, and he said, “Dom. I meant between them.”
That was so unexpected that Dom had to wrestle with the words in his head for a while before he could put them together, Mia and Letty and going on, and even once he’d worked out the order, it still didn’t make any sense. It was like Brian had turned and gone, do you think it’s going to snow tomorrow?
He said, “O’Conner. You think my wife is fucking my sister?”
“Um,” Brian said. He was actually blushing. “I think it would be the other way around, probably. Mia can be really-” and Dom said, “Jesus, they’re chicks; it doesn’t work like that,” except then he was thinking about how it would work, and also what exactly it was that Mia could really be, and he had to force himself to stare at the screen and focus on the various atrocities XZibit was committing against a DeVille. That wasn’t too hard, at least, because they’d wedged twenty-inch rims into the thing, and you could almost hear the wheel wells getting ground down. Also, they’d painted it in candy-pink pearl, and turned the trunk into a rotating shoe rack.
“That should be fucking illegal,” he said. “They should put the guy on a registry. Can’t come within two thousand feet of a car.”
Brian said, “I don’t mind the color.” He squinted at the screen. “I used to know this girl-” and then he put together what Dom was trying to do. “Look, I’m not making accusations. I was just wondering if you’d noticed anything.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Dom said, in a voice that made it clear that the conversation was over, and Brian shrugged and got up to find them more beers and a bag of tortilla chips.
Dom thought that was going to be the last time it came up, just because the idea was so completely ludicrous. He almost did tell Letty what Brian had said, just because he thought she might have gotten a kick out of it. He knew that she loved the guy, or at least liked him more than she liked most people, but taking pot shots at him was still pretty high up on the list of things she enjoyed, somewhere between dragging her foot up Dom’s leg when they were in public and bringing up that one time he’d gone, look at the ass on that girl, and then the girl had turned around and it had been a short guy with long hair.
That thought made him realize something, and then he had to go and make a phone call. It was kind of late, and Brian answered sounding groggy, but Dom wasn’t looking to beat around the bush. Brian went, “Dom, what-” and he asked, “Does Mia like women?”
“Christ, ask her yourself,” Brian said, bewildered. Then: “Hold on. Is this about-” and Dom was hanging up, because Brian hadn’t denied it, and the call had been pointless anyway, since he had already gotten the answer.
Huh. Well, he guessed that was her prerogative. And he wasn’t going to ask her about it, since they didn’t really talk about that kind of thing, and also, she might want to know why he was curious, and your husband thinks you’re two-timing him with my wife didn’t seem like it would go over well.
He still had to spend a lot of time processing that, and then Letty wanted his full attention, and he had to give it to her pretty quickly so she wouldn’t ask who that had been on the phone. He’d been running on residual surprise for five hours, so he basically rolled off of her and zonked out, and he never had gotten around to mentioning it, but it seemed like the moment had passed.
He did catch himself watching them a little more closely, and then he was pissed at himself for doing that, like the theory was remotely plausible and not just another one of those crackpot ideas Brian came up with and got stuck on. Yeah, sometimes the guy was right, but sometimes it was, come on, we’re gonna want that extra horsepower, and then they’d wrecked a piston and the whole engine was seizing, and he’d be going, fine, the cam was too big.
It didn’t matter what he thought, though, because nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He came downstairs and found them at the kitchen table, but they were just drinking coffee and shooting the shit. He lingered outside the doorway for a couple of seconds just in case, but all he heard was Mia saying, “I kind of want to go see that Greta Gerwig movie,” and then some rustling, like maybe she was holding up the paper. Letty went, “Mia, I would rather watch a hysterectomy,” which was not the most compelling evidence that they were carrying on a torrid affair.
He mentioned that to Brian in passing, when they were about to start hammering the dents out of the hood. Brian said, “Don’t say torrid. That’s gross. Also, do you really think they’d be doing it with you in the next room?”
Dom said, “Whatever, O’Conner.” He picked up the mallet.
But, yeah, everything was normal, and Letty was still dragging him into bed every night. He guessed Brian and Mia were doing okay, too, because Brian hadn’t gotten that cagey look Dom remembered from the end of the third trimester, when Mia had threatened to cut off the dick of anyone who'd even mentioned sex around her. Brian had spent a lot of time prowling around the house looking mournful, even though he'd also been taking thirty-minute showers, and he’d said, I’m just freaked out about, you know, the pressure of fatherhood. Dom had said, yeah, pressure’s the problem. But Brian seemed pretty relaxed, ambling up the driveway in the afternoon and cracking easy jokes about the traffic and the carburetor.
Cracking jokes, and then he said, “You have to admit they’ve been spending a lot of time together.”
“Yeah, so have we.” Brian shrugged. Dom went for the diversion again. He said, “You do something different with your hair?” It looked curlier, and more – glossy, or something.
“Oh,” Brian said. He ran his hand through it, a little self-conscious. “Yeah. It was Mia’s idea. It’s got coconut oil in it. Do you-” and then his eyes narrowed. “Nice try. Seriously, what do you think they’re doing? Swapping recipes?”
Dom said, “God, I wish,” because all Letty knew how to make was Spanish rice and Top Ramen. She was pretty good at it, so he wasn’t complaining, but he thought they might end up with some kind of nutrient deficiency.
“Well, you could learn to cook too, you asshole,” Brian said. It was amazing how sometimes he could open his mouth and Mia’s voice would come out.
Dom didn’t really know what he thought they talked about. Girl stuff, or engine repair, or something. Him and Brian, probably. Sometimes he would walk into a room and they would look at him and do a lot of snickering.
“Look,” Brian said. “Whenever I come over, Letty leaves and goes to my place. Have you noticed that?”
He had, sort of, in an absent-minded way, but he’d figured it was just a practical thing, since there was the kid, and also, sometimes she’d be leaning through the door to the garage, going, Christ, the testosterone in here. It wasn’t like she was seeing Brian’s car and heading for the hills – she always stuck around for a while.
Still, after that, he was thinking about it, watching the Nissan pull out and turn the corner. He went to Brian and Mia’s place – not to test a hypothesis; there wasn’t a hypothesis; it wasn’t unusual or anything, because he always came over on the weekends. Brian and Jack met him at the door, and Dom got a full tour of a new toy car somebody had given him that played a song when you pulled up the hood. He agreed that yes, it was very cool, mostly to get Jack to close it up again. Brian had a slightly wild-eyed look that suggested some batteries were about to go missing.
Mia came in and gave him a quick one-armed hug, and then started slipping her shoes on, and before Dom could think better of it, he said, “You know, you could stick around.”
“Really?” She sounded skeptical, for some reason. “What were you planning on doing?”
“Well, I was gonna take a look at his fuel injectors,” Dom said. He guessed he could have come up with something a little more enticing, but it was the truth.
“Uh,” Mia said. She was glancing between him and Brian. “I’m going to pass on that.” She kind of backed away towards the door, and they heard her call, “Put him down for his nap first!” from the driveway, like they had been planning on pulling out the flammables with Jack in the garage, or maybe just handing him a wrench.
That was weird. He asked Letty about it later, because she’d been in a good mood, and they had already gone one round, so she was blissed-out, curled up with her head on his chest.
“I dunno,” she said. “She seemed normal to me. We went down to Sunset to people-watch.”
He couldn’t help himself. “Then what?”
“Came back. Caught that show about slutty waitresses.”
She was looking up at him a little funny, but he had already committed. He said, “Oh. What happened?”
“A lot of drunk fighting and shit,” she said. It checked out, but it was pretty vague. “That she likes, for some reason. Why are you asking?”
“I’m interested in your life,” Dom said. He thought it was actually a decent save – kinda romantic, even. Letty raised an eyebrow, but then she shrugged, and said, “Well, okay, I guess,” and even looked a little pleased, so he figured he was off the hook.
Then she spent a full forty-five minutes telling him about how the Ducati Diavel Carbon was different from the Ducati Diavel Dark, and he had to nod and look engaged the whole time, even though he didn’t know shit about bikes, and by the end, he was pretty sure the difference was just that the first one had some carbon in it somewhere. He guessed he deserved that.
So, they hadn’t gotten any further from where they’d started. Brian had the really fantastic idea that maybe they should try to confront them about it, which was great for him, because he’d never watched his wife beat a grown man bloody.
“Oh, that’s brilliant,” Dom said. He hadn’t been in a great mood to start with, because he’d had a really weird dream the night before, and now Brian was asking for trouble. “You wanna spend your Saturday pulling a crowbar out of my ass? I’m not asking Letty that shit. You can take it up with Mia, if you’re so sure.”
Brian had gone all red, for some reason. He said, “I guess – I’m only, like, sixty-five percent certain,” which meant he didn’t want to be the one to float the theory, either, and so Dom guessed they were just keep going to go around in circles.
And Brian wouldn’t just forget about it, either. He and Mia came over for lunch – only sandwiches; it was too hot to do any real cooking, or even to stand over the barbecue. Letty was digging through the junk drawer for the bottle opener, and then Dom remembered they’d forgotten to bring it in from the garage. She went out to find it, and Mia had her back to them, tearing off paper towels, and Brian hissed into Dom’s ear, “She has a hickey!”
Well. He couldn’t argue with that. It wasn’t a huge one, and it was pretty light, like maybe she’d tried to cover it up, but there was something on the side of her neck. That didn’t mean shit on its own, though. Brian had probably done it and just forgotten, but Dom got the feeling he wasn’t gonna be receptive to that argument. Instead, he muttered, “That could’ve been the milkman.”
Brian said, “Yeah, sixty years ago.”
“Fine, postman,” Dom said. “You wanna go on Maury and get Jack tested? Find out whether Letty’s the father?”
Brian actually covered the kid’s ears at that, like he thought it was gonna give him a complex, or possibly just so he wouldn’t repeat it. He was opening his mouth, but then Mia turned around, and they kind of sprang apart and pretended to be searching for potato chips.
“Check if Letty has one,” Brian whispered later, when they’d finished and headed out into the yard to watch Jack line all his Hot Wheels up in the grass and then stomp on them, making dinosaur noises. Dom went, “Jesus, O’Conner!” because the guy needed to stop sneaking up on him, and also because he had been doing that, had been craning his neck for forty-five minutes, but Letty had her hair down and it was making things hard.
But she was standing at the edge of the lawn, and she reached up to set her bottle on the porch behind her. She had to tilt her head back, so they had a clear view. Dom squinted at her and didn’t see much, but they’d just spent three days in Malibu, so maybe the tan would have hidden it. In his peripheral vision, he could see Brian angling for a better vantage point, and he guessed he was being too obvious about it, because Letty went, “What do you think you’re looking at?”
“Oh, nothing,” Brian said hastily, and then, because it was obvious she wasn’t buying it, “Uh, you look really pretty right now.” Sometimes Dom couldn’t believe that he’d been a narc.
Letty stared at him like she thought he had lost his mind, and then she said, “Save that shit for your wife, O’Conner.” Dom and Brian both went to say something and then thought better of it. Anyway, Mia had heard, and she glanced up and asked, “Save what for me?” They all looked at each other for a moment, and then they got saved by the bell for the second time, because Jack came running over and delivered one of those minute-long full-speed-ahead toddler monologues where Dom could make out about every tenth word. Mia said, “Dom, Jack would like you to pretend to be a second, bigger dinosaur, who is very strong but no match for the first dinosaur, who has laser eyes,” and yeah, he could do that.
He could do that, and he could do a nice drawn-out death, where he got hit by the lasers and fell back onto the grass, and the kid laughed his ass off and it made Mia smile. Letty made a lot of really helpful comments, like, “Get him between the legs. It’s the source of his power,” but Mia shot her a look and she backed off. Maybe she just remembered that someday they might want to have their own baby, and that was going to be a lot harder if Dom had been repeatedly sucker-punched in the nuts by a three-year-old. Either way, she dropped the issue, and Dom thought that was worth getting mud all over his back.
Three days later, Brian showed him a photo – all blurry, taken through the front window, like he’d been crouching in the bushes or something. It was definitely Letty and Mia on the couch, and they were definitely sitting pretty close, but it was dim and warped by the glass, so Mia might have just been leaning in to say something.
Dom said, “That doesn’t prove shit, and before you ask, I’m not doing fucking espionage with you.”
“I know what I saw,” Brian said. “Look, you don’t have to walk in on them. Just come over, and leave early, and – listen at the door, or something.”
“I don’t want to hear that, either,” Dom snapped, and that was a mistake, because it meant admitting that there was something he thought he might hear. Brian huffed out a breath and said, “You’re so stubborn sometimes,” but then he shook his head and dropped it. Not dropped it – just put it in his back pocket, ready to be pulled out another time. Dom already knew it was just going to keep coming up, and that thought was almost enough to make him agree to the stupid plan. Almost.
But in the end, they didn’t need it, because he and Letty went over for dinner on a Sunday. Brian made some kind of pasta with sausage and tomato that turned out really shockingly good, and Dom could already tell Letty was getting ideas, and he would probably have to go home and figure out how to use the Cuisinart. They drank red wine instead of Corona, which sometimes still made him feel like a teenager pretending to be an adult, and Mia caught him up on the people she liked in her classes and also a few of the funnier assholes. Then Jack had been bathed and put to bed and read a vaguely ridiculous number of books about farm animals, and Brian said, “If you and I are going to go out, we should do it now, before it gets fully dark.”
The day before, they’d put the engine back into the Torino, and it wasn’t anywhere near being finished, but it was driveable, and Dom had taken it for the first spin just to make sure it wouldn’t fall apart, and then brought it over as a kind of surprise.
Letty and Mia weren’t too sad to see them go, and Dom had a nagging suspicion that it wasn’t just because they both preferred imports. He wasn’t thinking about it, because the sky was still blue, and he could already feel that new-ride rush, barreling down the PCH with Brian beside him, laughing and sliding smoothly into sixth. The numbers ticking up on the speedometer and the road stretching out endlessly ahead, a gorgeous feeling, the best feeling in the world, or second-best, credit to Letty where she deserved it. But they only got halfway down the driveway, and then he remembered he’d dropped the fob in the bowl out of habit, and they had to double back.
And they hadn’t bothered to lock the door, and Mia and Letty had already started going at it. They broke apart when he and Brian walked in, but thirty seconds in, Letty had lost her shirt, so it was a pretty fucking compromising situation.
“Oh, shoot,” Mia said, perfectly calm, like they’d walked in on her – burning the cookies, or something. She didn’t even try to deny it. “We should have waited. I think it was the leather pants,” and Letty went, “Yeah, sorry,” glancing down at the pants, pleased, and not looking very sorry at all.
“Hold on,” Dom said. “You’re apologizing for – getting an early start on fucking my sister?”
Letty said, “Well, technically-” and he said, “Yeah, okay, I heard about that!”
“Toretto,” she said. “Are you seriously upset? Because that would be pretty goddamn hypocritical-” and Dom didn’t want her to bring that up, not if it wasn’t necessary, anyway, so he said, “No! No. We just never talked about it.”
“I know we didn’t talk about it,” Mia said, frowning. “We thought there was an...unspoken agreement. Sometimes we wanted more control over the timing, but once you started dropping hints, we could anticipate it a little.”
That only made things more confusing. Dom asked, “What the hell do you mean, dropping hints?”
“Are you kidding me?” Letty asked, incredulous. “All that shit about fuel injectors, and head studs, and the crank shaft?" And Mia went wide-eyed and said, “Letty. Oh my God. They were actually just working on the cars.”
“Yeah, we were working on the cars!” Dom said, because whatever the hell this mix-up had been, it couldn’t have been that funny, and they didn’t need to be clutching their stomachs, practically falling off the goddamn couch. “What else would we-” and then it hit him. “Shit.”
“Oh,” Brian said. “Oh. You thought we were-” and Letty caught her breath for long enough to go, “Jesus, they can’t even say it,” and that set both of them off again.
Once they had gotten it out of their systems, and Mia had wiped her eyes and Letty had done some dramatic deep breathing, they started exchanging a lot of meaningful looks. Mia said, “You know, the problem is-” and Letty said, “It’s ‘cause they’re guys,” and they stared at Brian and then turned to Dom at the exact same time like those freaky twins from The Shining. Then Mia stood up, and Letty followed her, and they started heading for the door.
Brian said, “Hold on. Where are you going?”
“The grocery store,” Mia said firmly. Letty grimaced, but then she nodded. “We’re out of milk. We’ll be back in two hours. Work it out.” And then then the Acura was peeling out of the driveway, and Dom and Brian were just standing there in the living room.
“I can’t believe they thought that,” Dom said, almost to himself. Brian said, “Yeah, that’s crazy.”
They looked at each other.
“We just got a new rug,” Brian said. “For the guest room.” There was a long pause where Dom thought possibly he had gone into shock, or was just really fishing for something to distract them.
Then he kept going. “Uh. Do you want to see it?”
-
Mia came back two hours later on the dot, and all she said was, “I dropped her off.” But then she hugged him, a real hug, before she and Brian waved him off, and she said, “And I’m glad you got over your – machismo, or whatever.”
Letty was waiting on the couch. No surprise there. It occurred to him that it didn’t usually take two hours to find the dairy aisle, and he guessed Mia had just been gentle, before, because evidently the tan didn’t matter.
Not that he had a leg to stand on. She took him in, and a shit-eating grin spread across her face.
“Don’t say anything,” Dom told her.
She shrugged. “That was the agreement, remember?”