Red Wine On Her Yellow Dress

Then I heard my friend Tony's voice from the entrance door shouting, "Calm down! Calm down! Elise is taking care of them for the night."

I asked him, "What's going on here?"

He replied, "Emmelie says that you are cheating on her."

I opened my grip off Emmelie's arms and shouted at her, "Who in the hell has told you such damn lies and why have you believed that rat. Trust me, I have never cheated you."

Emmelie sobbed, "Why that cake?"

"Because I made a good sale today."

Emmelie began to cry and sobbed, "I don't believe a word of what you say. You are going out of this house this very evening. Start packing and get out from my sight."

I asked Tony, "Do you know anything about this silly mess?"

He replied, "Nothing more than Emmelie came to us with your children and asked if we could take care of them during the evening while she would throw you out of the house."

"I'm not going anywhere from this house without a court order because I haven't done anything wrong. Tony, could you try to find out what's wrong with Emmelie and who has got her so close to destroying our marriage with such false rumors."

He shook his head, "I've already tried hard but Emmelie refuses to tell me anything about it. Didn't she tell you anything before I was here?"

"I don't know anything at all. I came home with a nice cake for celebrating a good sale and she threw it in my face."

"It could have been a good comedy but I don't have any problems to skip laughing. You have never cheated her, have you?"

"No, of course not. I thought that Emmelie and I had a good marriage. Please stay here so you can testify that I'm not doing her any kind of harm."

We went into the bedroom where Emmelie was sitting on the bed crying. I tried to be calm and asked her, "Could you please tell me the reason why you behave as you do?"

She looked at me for a while before she replied, "Don't pretend to be innocent. You are a cheater and you shall leave the house this very evening. Do you understand?"

"No, I don't and two things are for sure. I have never cheated on you and I'm not leaving this house. You can go to your mother or to our spare room but I'll stay in this bedroom and you will not."

Tony asked Emmelie to follow him to the kitchen to talk. She accepted and they left me alone in the bedroom. I had many thoughts circling in my head but the only thing I knew for sure was that I had somehow been involved in some strange matters and whatever was going on, it was out of my control. Not funny at all.

Thirty minutes later Tony knocked on the door and said that there was coffee in the kitchen. Emmelie had obviously calmed down a lot and could talk without shouting when she told me that she accepted to sleep in the spare room until we had cleared up our problems and our children would be back home the next day.

Tony left for home but Emmelie remained sitting at the kitchen table. She refused to tell me any further information about why she had caused us our serious problems. After a while she told me that everything between us could be back to normal again if I immediately accepted one single condition.

I got curious and asked, "Depends on what you want me to do?"

"Confess your cheating and swear to never do it again."

"I've never cheated you and therefore it is impossible for me to confess anything I never done."

To my surprise she didn't began shouting again, only said with a low voice, "So you prefer the hard way, do you?"

"No, in this matter I prefer the true way. I will be honest with you and expect you to tell me the truth about what the hell is going on here?"

"In that case, please be honest and confess."

I looked her straight in her eyes and said, "It's too many open questions in this mess. Let's go to the very beginning, you ought to agree that it is high time for me to know with whom, how, when and where the stone began rolling. Could you please tell me who hates me so much that he or she has created this mess and how in the hell has this monster got you to act as a puppet on a string to destroy your own marriage and have your children grow up with step parents."

The phone began ringing and saved Emmelie from further arguing. Obviously it was Elise and our children who called her and they talked for more than one hour but not much about the present problem.

Next week was a strange time in our marriage. Our children were back home again and both of us did our best to pretend to behave as normal as possible when they were present. There was no yelling and shouting between Emmelie and me. Our talking was limited to the necessary minimum and both of us did our best to be polite and correct, which must have sounded weird if anybody had listened.

Somehow Emmelie and I were able to share the cooking exactly as we used to do.

Gossip spreads very fast and within a few days our problems were known among most of our friends and acquaintances. But it was the headmaster at Emmelie's school who took Emmelie into his office for a private talk.

He told her that it was well visible that she didn't feel well and suggested a simple solution, which might help her. His old mother had won the first prize, a holiday week for two at Gran Canaria, in some "Best Flower competition" some time ago. The problem was that the tickets were valid for a limited time only and there was not much time left. His mother didn't dare to fly and he himself didn't have time to go there. Of course, the prize was only the flight and a week in an apartment in a quiet area, not any of the top hotels. He told her that it would be a perfect place for fixing marriage problems and she would get it for a low price.

Emmelie told me that she was willing to go but didn't promise any results from the trip. I accepted because we could find romantic things to do and find some solution for our problems. The name of the apartment hotel, Agustino Beach, didn't tell me anything and I didn't care to do any further investigation about it.

Elise and Tony offered to have our kids, who preferred that solution much better than staying at my parents. Emmelie's parents would never agree to have them for a week.

Off we went. I felt that Emmelie and I were back to a rather good relation with friendly small talk during both the 3-hour drive to the airport and the 5-hour flight. The apartment was in San Agustin, a holiday resort at the south coast of Gran Canaria. It was as expected, a small apartment hotel with a lawn and pool on the front side, surrounded by a high wall against the street. I got the impression that the apartment was privately owned and rented out to the travel agency when the owners didn't use it themselves.

There was not much nightlife in San Agustin but it was only five kilometers to Playa de Ingles where most of the action goes on. However, I didn't care about nightlife because we had much more important matters to deal with.

We had arrived there loaded with hope and expectation to fix the marriage problems once for all and I expected to have a good time with my lovely wife. But how wrong I was, because the shit hit the fan at breakfast during our first morning there.

Our apartment was at the ground floor with a terrace outside a wide the sliding door, which was our only door. On the terrace there was a table with two chairs and two sun-beds. It was divided from the next apartment by some one and a half meter high bushes with red flowers.

While eating our breakfast we heard two voices speaking French and slightly thereafter there were two longhaired obviously non-European men, one darker than the other looking at us over the bush. Emmelie, who has been six months as au-pair girl in France greeted them in French and after a while they had a lively talk over the bush. Neither Emmelie nor any of the men took any notice about me.

I tried to ask if they spoke English, but they pretended not to hear me though I repeated it with a loud voice. Emmelie continued her chatting with them for a long time and obviously they had some fun because all of them began laughing.

When they had left I asked Emmelie, "What did those damn frog-eaters say that was so funny?"

"You wouldn't understand their French jokes. They are French and the names are Pierre and Jacques."

"I really doubt that and I'll prefer to call them "Friday" and "Asterix". Friday because I, like Robinson Crusoe, found a naive dark native on an island. Asterix because it is the only French comic character I ever heard about. Those names fit perfect."

"They are our neighbors and I like them because speaking French with them will help me freshen up the language again."

"I've noted that."

Emmelie hated racism and I avoided further comments about her new friends and their roots in some French colony.

I'm careful with the sun but Emmelie took her sun-bed to the pool and within a few minutes the darkest of our neighbors was beside her with his sun-bed. I didn't care about that and took a book and a chair with me and sat down in the shadow under a palm. Obviously Emmelie's new admirer was a funny guy, because she had many loud laughs.

The main reason why the Spanish Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean have been popular holiday resorts for us from the north is the pleasant climate. Thanks to the Gulf stream, it never get as hot and unpleasant as at the Mediterranean islands during the summer. Emmelie understood to be careful even with the Canaria sun during our first day there and when her French admirer left her, she wanted to go for lunch at the nearby shopping center and as there was no restaurant or café at the hotel, we had to shop for the next morning's breakfast.

To my disappointment I noted that now that she was together with me she was far from the jolly giggling girl than she had been at the pool with Friday.

After lunch she suggested that we go to the beach and of course, the first people we saw there were her French-speaking friends. There happened to be two available sun-beds beside theirs and Emmelie took off her bikini top, sat down on the empty sun-bed next to Friday and turned into a jolly girl again.

Emmelie and I never wore any valuables with us to the playa (beach) I have a small watertight box in a string where we use to have some money and the keycard or key to our hotel. After chatting and giggling for a while Friday said something to Emmelie, who put on her bikini top and told me, "Stay here and look after their belongings"

Before I had a chance to say anything all three of them rushed to the sea. I went towards the sea too, but kept some distance to the side of them, just close enough that I could see what they did. They seemed to have fun splashing water on each other. While I was swimming outwards and back Emmelie and her friends had moved toward the spot where I had gone into the sea. It was she who first saw me and shouted, "Robin, what in the hell are you doing here?"

I saw her panicked friends running back to their sun-beds and replied, "Swimming. Haven't you been in the water yourself?"

She kept shouting, "Didn't I tell you to watch the valuables?"

I showed her my watertight box, "Don't worry, they are here."

"My friends' belongings? Don't you care?"

"No, not a shit."

When we came back to our sun-beds obviously no valuables had been stolen but Friday began to shout something at me in French, which I didn't understand and I shouted back very loudly in my own language, "You damn frog-eating son of a raped scabby whore, go to hell and don't try to fuck my silly slut wife."

Friday didn't understand a word of what I shouted but many other people around us did. Our Scandinavian languages are so close to each other and as Swedish even is the official second language in Finland, my message to Friday was understood by people from four countries.

Emmelie, who was the only one of us who had understood both what Friday shouted at me and what I shouted back to him, refused the request of translation from both him and me.

To my pleasure I had noted that Friday had taken a few steps back when I shouted at him, which ought to mean that he somehow felt guilty and feared me. Though I was a tall well built man, I had never been a fighter of any kind and not been involved in any fight since a memorable tennis game at the age of twelve. I did my army service as medic and spent a lot of the time as trainee at a hospital having a pleasant time with girls from the nurse school instead of training fighting.

However, I had no intentions to fight Emmelie's admirers at a public beach and spend two years in a Spanish jail waiting for trial. But now I knew for sure that I was able to take care of the matters if those fellows would attack me or go too far in their teasing of me.

But for the time being I had much worse problems than Friday and Asterix. Emmelie was red in her face from anger and shouted at me, "Don't you understand how much you have humiliated me with your stupid shouting among all people here at the playa?"

"What about yourself? Haven't you neglected and humiliated me since you met those damn frog bolters? Have you ever said a single word to me when those creeps have been close to us?"

"It's impolite if we speak a language they don't understand."

Now I shouted again, "What about any respect for me? Don't they have any kind of education in that country? Do you believe that I can understand their frog croaking?"

Her friend's said something in French and left. Emmelie and I went to the shopping center to read Scandinavian newspapers online at an internet-café and shop for the next morning's breakfast. We walked in silence and not much was said during the shopping. But back at the apartment she began barking again, "How would you feel if somebody had stolen my friend's valuables at the playa.

"Very well, I presume."

She was mad again, "You must be insane."

Now I got angry, "What the hell are you talking about? Is it really my fault that those two arrogant bastards run away from their belongings? Did you hear me agree to look after their things? Why are you humiliating me by pretending that I don't exist when they are near us? What the hell have you told them about me? Have you told them that I'm a coward wimp who will allow them to fuck you?"

I continued, "What do you want? Why are we here if you want a divorce?"

She didn't have to reply because Elise rang her and she talked with our children and to my great surprise she told Elise that everything was fine with us. Talking with our children put me in a better mood, but I asked her, "Everything is fine, is that really true."

"Please calm down because it could have been much worse and it will be better, hopefully much better."

I decided to let it be because we were on talking terms, at least as long as we were alone and I wanted to go out for dinner without any arguing.

When it was time to go, Emmelie insisted that we find a restaurant that her friends had recommended as one of the best in the neighborhood. I suspected what was to come but didn't want to leave her alone, so I followed her in there. Only five minutes later her friends were there and had booked a table for four. Emmelie went to their table and sat down next to Friday and Asterix opposite her. I followed after her.

Friday gave her several hugs before he began to tell her some kind of a long story that obviously was funny because she and Asterix giggled several times. I asked her, though I knew her reply, "What did he say?"

She pretended not to hear me, so I asked again with a much louder voice, "What did he say?"

Now she noted people looking at us so she didn't dare to ignore me any longer and replied with, "Nothing you can understand."

"Those damn frog bolters are really impolite bastards."

Asterix said something to her, that obviously was a request for translation of my comment because immediately after her reply, both her friends began squeaking, "Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack."

Even a peaceful man can have enough. I rose up from my chair and told Emmelie with a loud voice, "If you don't leave this place with me, the fight will begin when I have counted to six."

I stared at her and began counting, "One.... Two.... Three.... Four."

There were two Scandinavian couples sitting a few tables from us and one of the men rose up from his chair and shouted at me, "Right my friend, don't let those bastards humiliate you, we will assist if necessary."

Emmelie understood that her game had gone too far and caused danger for her now very silent and frightened friends so she stood up at five and followed me out to the street without saying a word. We found another, obviously much better, restaurant and had our dinner in a chilly mood but without any further arguing. Even going with me to a bar show with an "Elvis look-alike" was okay for her.

The next day we were booked for a whole day "around the island coach tour". That didn't begin very well for Emmelie. Some "all inclusive" hotels have chilled sparkling white wine available at the breakfast and a couple sitting a few seats behind us had obviously not missed that opportunity.

After a while we heard the woman ask her spouse with a loud voice, "Isn't the girl in the yellow T-shirt the silly whore who wanted to fuck some Arab at the playa yesterday and her poor wimp husband has not dumped her yet."

Emmelie got red as a tomato in her face when people began to stare at us.

At the first stop the tipsy woman came to Emmelie and said she was very sorry for her stupid comments. But an elderly woman, slightly boozed, came to us and asked Emmelie, "Did you really dare to fuck an Arab at the playa in broad daylight?"

Emmelie was so surprised that she made a big mistake by beginning her reply with, "He is French and..."

People around us began to laugh and the boozed woman shouted, "What's the difference? Was he big and good?"

I told her, "My wife has never done anything at the playa and it's better for you to shut up."

There were no further stupid questions during the day but Emmelie was really ashamed during the whole tour around the island.

Our guide at the tour mentioned that one of the big hotels at Playa de Ingles had a good dance band that evening and Emmelie wanted to go there, which was okay for me.

We went there and as soon Emmelie had seen Friday and Asterix sitting there sharing a table with two other men, she told me, "I'll stop here for a while, go get me a drink" and went to their table where they immediately fixed a chair for her.

I decided that I did not care a shit about Emmelie, went to the bar and got a whisky and began to chat with a pretty English girl standing next to me.

She wanted to dance and was good at that, so we remained a rather long time on the dance floor before we found two empty chairs at a table where we could rest and have a drink.

Her name was Stephanie and she was living at that hotel with her husband, who was grounded in their room with belly problems. It was he who had persuaded her to go to the dance. I expected her to be in her late twenties but didn't care to ask a pretty lady about her age.

I told her my story about a wife who for some reason humiliated me with two French guys who even were here tonight and, together with two others, took turns dancing with her.

Stephanie suggested that wee try to tease the silly bitch and the next slow tune we noted that Emmelie and her friends remained seated, so we danced very close when Emmelie and her friends could see us from their table. I had only eyes for Stephanie, who told me that all five of them had stared at us. It was my turn to have a good time.

After some time I noted that Emmelie's French admirers had left their table and that a young couple had taken the seats. I didn't care try to dance with her.