“What’s your problem, Sammy?” Leo wanted to know. “You’ve barely touched your drink. He’s barely touched his drink, guys.”

Giuseppe shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

Sammy sat at their table leaning uncomfortably forward in his chair, brow furrowed, elbows propped on the table, hands clasped together, his bourbon untouched.

“Well?” Giuseppe said. “You gonna keep us in suspense all evening?” He scanned the crowded, lively bar. Country music whinnied over the speakers. Couples two-stepped on the small, square dance floor. “Thought we were here to do some drinking and have a good time.”

“Guys,” Sammy said from the side of his mouth. “It’s fucking embarrassing.”

“Like, how embarrassing?” Leo asked, his slightly off-center eyes staring who knows where. “Did you shart or shit yourself? Or is your ex here with some Bruno Sammartino type?”

“Who the fuck is Bruno Sammartino?” Giuseppe asked.

“Call yourself Italian?” Leo said.

“Hey, my mother’s Irish, bro. I didn’t grow up with all that guinea shit in our house.”

“Never mind,” Leo said, dismissive of Giuseppe’s stance.

“He was the, uh, wrestler dude,” Sammy said, wincing. “My Uncle Dominic—Uncle Dominic used to love. The guy. Some kind of… of champion. Back in the old days. Before Vince McMahon. Ugh.”

“Yo, is it your appendix, bro?” Leo asked, his look concerned but askew.

Sammy shook his head and sucked his lower lip.

“Hemorrhoids?” Giuseppe said. “My old man used to get bloody grape clusters down there, boy. Not a happy camper.”

“Enough,” Sammy said. “It’s not hemorrhoids.”

A perky blonde waitress in green plaid appeared at their table. “You boys ready for another round?” she asked, all dimples.

“Yeah, bring another,” Giuseppe said. “We’re planning to get our friend here drunk. He’s getting married next week.”

“Congratulations,” the waitress gushed, drawing her hands to her breast and shaking her shoulders.

Sammy grimaced. He wasn’t get married. Indeed, he’d been divorced for just over a year and was currently negotiating the landmines of online dating. Dating wasn’t what it used to be.

The smiling waitress leaned over. “That table of gals over there are having themselves a bachelorette party. Better watch out, they’re pretty frisky. They see a table of hunks like you fellas and there’s liable to be trouble.”

Giuseppe smiled and nodded. Trouble, yes. If you say so, he seemed to suggest. Leo remained expressionless, staring at something obscure to everyone else.

“Well, I’ll get those drinks right quick.”

The waitress walked off and Giuseppe glanced over at a table with a bunch of hooting gals in party hats, one of them wearing a wedding veil and a sexy outfit involving a frilly bustier, garters and dark hosiery. “I Walk The Line” thrummed over the speakers and the ladies howled.

“They’re having a ood old ball,” Leo said.

“They’d scare wolves at night,” Giuseppe said.

Giuseppe and Leo shared a laugh but Sammy remained strained and discomfited.

“Come on, man,” Giuseppe said. “You’re starting to bum me out.”

“Yeah,” Leo said. “What is this?”

Sammy shook his head and looked at both of his friends with an earnestness unusual for a hardened cynic like him.

“Share,” Giuseppe said. “If not with us then with who?”

“You mean whom?” Leo said.

“I mean suck my dick, okay?”

Sammy waved his hands. “Guys, guys. Okay.” He glanced over at the bachelorette table and swallowed. “So I had a date last night with this very hot divorcee and we had gotten along nice on the phone and on our first date last week. I mean, finally, you know. So I figured we’d go out for dinner and then maybe back to my place for a cocktail or two—”

“And bing bang bing,” Leo said.

Sammy sighed. “I was afraid that if it came to that, being out of practice and having a few issues with the prostate, see, I’d go the premature ejaculation route or maybe freeze up and not be able to get hard at all.”

“Erectile dysfunction,” Giuseppe said.

Leo frowned. “Erectile dysfunction?”

Sammy glared at him. “So I took a blue pill sort of halfway through dinner.”

“A blue pill?” Leo said.

“Yes,” Sammy said. “A blue fucking pill. Do I have to repeat everything with this fucking guy?”

Leo smiled but did not comprehend.

Sammy’s lips tightened. “Do I have to spell it out?”

“For the erectile dysfunction,” Giuseppe clarified.

“Oh, okay,” Leo said, still baffled.

“Anyway,” Sammy continued. “I took the pill and it sometimes has these side effects.”

“Not good for people with bad hearts,” Giuseppe noted.

“So you didn’t get laid?” Leo asked.

“No. I did not get laid. But that’s not the thing.” Sammy squirmed in his seat. Beads of sweat pimpled his forehead and upper lip.

“They say you can get an erection in some cases for like four hours,” Giuseppe said. “So you didn’t exploit that?”

“Guys,” Sammy said. “She was game. That wasn’t the problem. But I had a throbbing rager from the moment we left the restaurant and I think it kinda spooked her.”

“Hell, it would’ve spooked me,” Leo chortled.

“Thing is, I wasn’t horny at all, and four hours were nothing. I mean, after four hours I was sore and disgusted and couldn’t sleep, but I still had a rager.”

“So you’re feeling shitty about how it all went down,” Leo said.

“That’s not it. It’s been about twenty-four hours since I took the pill.”

Giuseppe leaned forward, pop-eyed. “And you still have a hard on?”

Sammy nodded. “Yeah. And it’s like killing me. I’m starting to get real worried.”

“You mean, all this time you’ve been sitting there with a fucking hard on,” Leo marveled. “That is so disturbing.”

Giuseppe leaned back in his chair and sighed.

The waitress arrived with the drinks. She put them down, gave Sammy a flared-nostril smile and walked off, looking over her shoulder once.

“What was that?” Giuseppe asked.

“She sniffed it out,” Leo said, smirking behind his hand.

Sammy looked pained, ashamed.

A balloon popped at the bachelorette table, startling the boys. When they looked over, the ladies were looking back at them with big smiles, one of them waving.

“You think they sniffed it out, too?” Giuseppe asked with a straight face.

Convulsing with laughter, Leo pushed away from the table.

“It’s not funny,” Sammy said.

“No, it’s not funny,” Giuseppe said, lips taut as he struggled not to burst out laughing.