toothless smiles

So a funny thing happened last week. On wednesday night or so, my roommate Eric and I went out to a bar in Palermo called El Alamo. It was a smoky bar with a Bostonian bartender and nothing but American hits playing over the speakers, full of Americans and other tourists: I met tons of Americans, some Mexicans, Irish, a Spaniard and some Peruvians. I left a little early (around 330) before realizing that I'd spent all my small bills on the cover, and managed to scrounge together enough coins to take the bus.

The next day, however, I didn't see Eric all day. Around 5pm, I asked Adriana if she'd seen him, and she worriedly informed me that he was at the dentist. "What happened?", I asked. In a flurry of Spanish she told me that something had happened last night and he'd broken a tooth, that he'd gotten in a barfight and/or gotten beaten in the face with a pistol by a mugger, and/or gotten robbed. In my head, his toothless smile would be the result of my stupidly, selfishly leaving his drunk ass at a bar in a strange city. She told me that when he'd come to her early that morning with his tooth/teeth in hand, she'd wanted to die of fright.

There was no response to my calls or text messages, and so I began to worry. Adriana, upset that we stupid Americans weren't taking the appropriate precautions and were getting in fights and/or getting mugged, told me that maybe Eric wouldn't be coming back and that she was going to speak to the program director. Worried for his future, I timidly wolfed down my dinner and halfheartedly listened to her ranting.

Then, about 9:30 in the evening, Eric returned, with a fully restored smile and yesterday's clothes. I asked him what happened and he told me that no, he hadn't gotten in a fight and no, he hadn't gotten mugged, but rather had slipped while trying to grab a stone ledge for balance on the way home and knocked his face on it. 

Adriana nearly died from relief, and so we all laughed it out over tea and alfajores. But next time Eric loses a tooth, we'll make sure he at least gets to kick the other guy's ass first.