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“Believe me, Priscila, there’s nothing you can do to convince me. I want to sit here quietly with my coffee and watch the race on TV.”
I glance at the plasma screen hanging on one of the walls, not far from the dartboard. I sit up and bring my lips close to his ear. He looks at me sideways but doesn’t shift his attention from the screen.
“If you win,” I whisper, “I’ll let you do that thing you wanted to do earlier, on the table.”
To be honest, I think I’m just as eager to try it as he is. Even more.
“Really?” he asks, looking me in the eye now. Now I have his full attention.
“Mm-hmmm” I say, flirtatiously.
“I’m in. Pedro! Darts.”
We walk to the bar, where Pedro is waiting for us with the box of darts ready. Then we go straight to the dartboard and Alex lays out the rules.
“Okay, we’re playing 501. Whoever gets to zero first wins. Got it?”
No.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, trying to sound convincing.
He looks at me, narrowing his eyes, but accepts my answer without complaint.
“Okay. Let’s get started.”
Okaaaay. I understand that it’s all about hitting the bull’s-eye, it’s not that complicated. We’re not even playing yet and “I Will Survive” is already booming through the loudspeakers. Alex and I roll our eyes and look at Pedro, who is looking at us too, smiling.
“I’ll let you go first,” Alex says.
“How kind.” There’s a hint of hesitation in my voice.
“I just want to give you a head start, Queen of the Desert.”
The cheek! I grab one of the darts with my right hand and bring it to my right eye. I close the left one and aim at the target, moving the dart back and forth to calculate the trajectory, and... I throw. It glances off the board and falls to the ground without even making a dent, and it’s the same all three times I try. This is harder than it looks.
“Get out of the way, newbie.”
Alex aims one of his darts at the board and throws it in seconds. He must hit something important, because his 501 marker drops sixty points on the screen. With one shot!
“Do you know where you have to hit to get the most points?” he asks once he’s thrown his three darts and got some pretty good scores.
“In the center,” I say confidently.
“Well, no, smartass.”
Really?
“You’re just trying to confuse me so you can win.”
“I think I won’t need to.”
Even though I growl at him, he shows me the sections of the board that’ll give me more points—doubles and triples, and not the center as I thought. The Priscilla Queen of the Desert soundtrack carries on in the background.
“Pedro! Are you going to play the whole fucking CD?” Alex yells.
“Affirmative!” Pedro yells back, with a huge grin.
“What the hell, man!”
